Shane Murphy (00:02)

Welcome back everybody. I am here today with both Brennan Smith and Rob Ferian. They're the co-founders of Flying V Group, which is a top rated digital marketing agency that has, they've managed over $50 million in paid media spend. They drive over an average of 42 % for SEO traffic growth. And they've just focused on a variety of revenue generating digital marketing strategies.

So they work with a ton of restaurants. I'm super excited to have you both on the show today. Thanks for joining and sharing your experiences with a lot of these operators that are here. So thanks for being with us today.

Robb Fahrion (00:44)

Yeah, thanks so much for having us, Shane.

Brennan Smith (00:44)

Thanks for having us.

Shane Murphy (00:45)

Thanks so much

for being with us. You bet. Maybe before we dive too deep into strategies and tactical stuff, can you guys take a little bit of time and share a little bit about your backgrounds and your marketing agency as well?

Robb Fahrion (01:01)

Sure. Yeah, I'll start, I think, just with our backgrounds. think Brennan and I both kind of born and bred the same way when it comes to digital marketing, very just hands-on, right? So no real corporate formal training, ⁓ both business majors, ⁓ marketing emphasis, right? Communication, that kind of path. Social media was kind of coming online.

You know, we were both in that kind of same generation and then really accelerating obviously with Instagram as that picked up and you know, the rest is history from there. So ⁓ I think both of us were seeing a market evolve.

We're right in the middle of it in corporate environments to an extent, right? Maybe not headfirst involved, but starting to see, okay, what structure looked like, how these businesses were thinking about this. And then we kind of both even had our own little book of business, you know, kind of black book from a consulting standpoint, or at least just guys that would pick up the phone and call Brennan or pick up the phone and call Rob because, hey, I got a problem with my website or I got a problem.

with this or that.

And so, Brennan, I'll let him talk about ⁓ the restaurant component, right? We've ⁓ really been fortunate to carve out a strong vertical there. We do work pretty agnostically, I'd say, you my background more on the tech side, ⁓ work in kind of the wealth management, financial segments too. But Brennan also has experience, yeah, nightlife, hospitality, restaurants. And I mean, he's done an incredible job being able to really

tie out and understand, I think most importantly, the infrastructure and the analytics that are involved. And I think Brennan, that's where I'll turn it over to you, just in terms of the work we've done. And then obviously some of Brennan's background, but for us, really hands-on learning, lots of different clients, lots of different problems, lots of different challenges. We start to see it obviously get consolidated into these certain areas where, we've figured it out ⁓ or we've done something successful.

Brennan Smith (03:00)

Okay.

Yeah, would say that, you know, we've kind of taught ourselves everything just because it's an ever evolving market. ⁓ And I would kind of relate it to a digital transformation per se, because we grew up with laptops, right? That was the new thing. And if you think about people, maybe 20 years older than us,

concept of a computer at that, at our age when we got laptops, was unheard of, right? And I think growing up, I got a laptop maybe around 12 years old, right? One of those color MacBook ones and it was the coolest thing. And so did everyone else that was older than us and they were adapting to that new playground of marketing, right? There was a lot of billboards, magazines, all the old stuff, right? But now as those people adapted, say over 15 years,

Robb Fahrion (03:49)

.

Brennan Smith (04:06)

they realized that they had to play in that field, right? They realized that just as AI is coming in, people know they have to play in that field. And a lot of people would come to Rob or come to me and be like, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to log in my email, you know, this or that. And neither did we, but we were smart enough that, we grew up in that field that we could figure it out for them, right? And so going back to tying this into the restaurant industry, I started out.

⁓ in the hospitality industry in Scottsdale, Arizona and Actually full circle with Rob's Instagram comment I just remembered one of our bar managers like downloaded and created an Instagram for the bar because they didn't have it and they realized they needed one right and then I Grew into managing their social media and then it just kind of is this ever-evolving, you know

Robb Fahrion (04:53)

You

gotta tell them what you started doing though.

Brennan Smith (04:58)

What? ⁓ I a clump promoter? Yeah. Well, I figured since I was going to be going out at night.

Robb Fahrion (05:00)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Brennan's job was to get

the people into the building and throw a good party, which he was really good at. He was really good at.

Brennan Smith (05:09)

Yeah.

Well, I figured if I was going out at night, might as well get paid to do it. So, ⁓ that was my mentality, but to bring this back to digital marketing, thanks Rob. ⁓ basically we started to see, you know, that the bar, the restaurant needs a presence on social media. We need to do digital ads. And we've seen just year over year that they're starting to very much understand the need for digital marketing and not just have a brick and mortar and people are going to come in.

Robb Fahrion (05:14)

Yeah.

you

Brennan Smith (05:38)

There's too many people out there that can easily just pull up a restaurant on their phone and get it delivered. The way we're gonna reach them is digitally, because they're gonna be on that phone no matter what, but we wanna get more feet and more butts in the seats, right? So ⁓ I've just seen, it's very interesting, just field and niche that we also help service is just how can we get that end user into our customer store, right? A lot of industries are all online nowadays. ⁓

shopping malls are closing up shop, right? But restaurant industry is one of that's, you know, survived COVID if they have, right? That scare. ⁓ and if they have now more than ever is everyone's knowing the push for digital and instant gratification with food delivery. So I've just seen the restaurant industry go from like, you know, we have a brick and mortar and that's it, right? Maybe we got a guy in this corner with a little sign, right? To starting an Instagram account, to doing email blasts, now text, you know, obviously with Boosley, ⁓ and

Robb Fahrion (06:33)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brennan Smith (06:38)

You know, need SEO, they need, you know, tech, SMS, all that. It's becoming this omni-channel approach that we're seeing restaurateurs allocate more budget to because we're able to digitally track that from an ROI perspective. And I think there's always been this, don't know, because we don't, it's not like someone came in with this coupon that we mailed them, right? And so, yeah, a lot of experience in that industry and it's just an exciting space, I would say, because when you do it right, you can be very effective.

⁓ Because a lot of restaurants have this mindset that whatever happens in the first three months, I don't think we can eclipse that because that was our grand opening when really there's so many people out there that you can reach that don't even probably know about your place.

Robb Fahrion (07:23)

Yeah, and I think time out, or sorry, just one, yeah, the analytics piece too, right? It's like, hey, we run these 12 campaigns over the year and yeah, that's our best performing event and this is our worst. And then it's like, is it, is it that that copy is better than this and the offer or the targeting was off, know, certain things like that too.

Shane Murphy (07:24)

yeah, i love the-

Robb Fahrion (07:46)

So I think just getting that dialed in, again, tying it out to some sort of revenue action, you know, is where we're really coming in and...

Yeah, I mean it is that, okay, problem solving mentality, because obviously you're working across all these different stacks, you know, depending on the group that you're working with as well, you know? I mean, what's the POS? What's the table servicing? What's the mail integration? How are they handling it from a CRM perspective? And then they're like, okay, great, here it is. Now tie it all together, right? But that's where we're in there tying the wires out really a lot of the times, yeah.

Shane Murphy (08:22)

Yeah, so let's maybe dive a little bit deeper into some of that. What are some of the key strategies that when you're looking at a restaurant, you're going and helping to implement? And specifically, how do you track the success from an analytics perspective of, this strategy is working, this other one not so much, let's focus our resources here.

Brennan Smith (08:45)

Yeah, yeah, I would say with any client, not even just restaurants, it's understanding their goals first, right? What is the goal of this campaign for restaurants? It's either, you know, we have a dead Wednesday. We need to fill in more people on that. How are we going to do that? Or is it just holistically brand awareness? ⁓ But I would say the way we have integrated.

data and really getting very granular. Obviously with paid media, you can track that a lot closer, just because it's dollars in dollars out and transactions, whether it's online bookings, stuff like that. But from an SEO perspective, it's always been tough to articulate an ROI there. ⁓ The way we've kind of re-engineered how that's done is that we'll take, we've noticed, for example, a lot of people won't go.

or make an action when going to a restaurant's website, but more than likely trust Google when searching locally for a restaurant, right? So in a sense, when the user enters, let's just say best steakhouse near me, they'll be serviced about three of the locations that Google recommends in what's called the map pack. So if we can influence Google to place that restaurant there, then that user is clicking either call now book a table directions.

And then what we'll do is we'll tie into the restaurant's average check amount and then give a very, very, very conservative percentage of that average check amount to each of those call to actions. Obviously with book a table, we'll just say 40 % went, right? And then the rest may be canceled or we'll just being very generous and conservative. And then it goes down from there where it's, you know, ask for directions, right? If it's a nightclub, someone's asking for directions.

more likely probably walking to that place or getting dropped off or driving there or whatever. And then call, you know, maybe we'll allocate 1 % of total check revenue. But we've been able to take average check volume and articulate that to the Google by business as well as website traffic to kind of get a dollar amount there so restaurants can kind of see it versus, you know, coupons or anything like that. So it's kind of a very data analytical side utilizing traffic.

and call to actions on the website or on Google My Business page to then dollar amounts in in their PLS system.

Robb Fahrion (11:09)

And I mean, a lot of times too, the restaurants, right, you get to their website and what do you get served with? You get a homepage, you get a menu with maybe sometimes just linked to a PDF, you get a gallery with some pictures, you get a contact us, the form maybe works 20 % or 80 % of the time, right? And then a phone number that no one answers and the map or whatever, right? And so it's like to Brennan's point, okay, best steakhouse, whatever.

Just by putting that on one page of your website doesn't mean you're gonna be ranking or able to rank for that So what does that mean? We were talking about it before the show started right? It's the content so okay within Google my business you can post Content on a regular basis that has keywords targeting best steakhouse wherever it may be based on hey offers We might be running posting in on that particular day at that particular time Right because newness is a component of it right so I think

having that system and that structure and that's all SEO related and then guess what? We also have a page on the website that specifically talks about why we are the best steakhouse here. ⁓

And, and, you know, that's critical. So, ⁓ and then you talk about chat GPT too. It's like, okay, you have the AI component and now people are using AI to search. so Google is starting to lose some of that. It's not, you know, it's still 1%, 2%. but now it's like, well, how are people being served that content? It's like, well, they're not only getting, ⁓ the map pack listing in GPT, but they're also getting served the best tick tock.

information based on ⁓ based on what people are searching on TikTok or what content is available on TikTok maybe.

Shane Murphy (12:58)

Yeah, a few things to help the audience kind of grok some of this. So when you talk about the Mat Pack listing, what is the Mat Pack and how do you get involved with that?

Robb Fahrion (13:14)

Yeah, so Matpak is basically when someone searches, right, you're served with a variety of different content, a variety of different ways. For restaurants in particular, a lot of times you're going to be getting probably some sort of paid advertisement at the top. So it might be a listing of, you know, if it is, hey, 24 hour delivery near me, right? Okay, boom. More than likely, that's where a lot of the big guys are winning a lot of that traffic, right?

So your Yelp's, your ⁓ DoorDash, I mean, you name it, whatever you got, wherever you are. know, bike guys running around, whatever. ⁓ And then, you know, you're served with, okay, if it is a near me type search or something that is relevant to location, okay, an area, right? ⁓ And then obviously there's certain prevalence in terms of, okay, what type of area ⁓ the map pack is going to give.

Certain restaurants benefits one way or the other so it can be distance-based for sure ⁓ Reviews are critically important right because that's the other piece we could be the best digital digital best perception online But if people are getting into your restaurant, you're like telling them hey, we hate you. Please leave then that's

That's going to hurt us from a reputation score standpoint. So you've got that. And then it's like, okay, what are people saying in your reviews? Right? Like if it is best steakhouse and like, Hey, I drove 45 minutes to get to this place because that's how good it is. Well, guess what? Your radius starts to get bigger influence in that way, you know, or okay. You stand, you can stand to target those areas because you already have such a good concentration right in your backyard, which

That's obviously where we recommend, you know, local businesses own that traffic right in your own backyard. So.

Shane Murphy (15:12)

Yeah, so you mentioned a few different things that can help influence some of this. You mentioned reviews as one component of what helps you to expand your radius for that map back. You had also mentioned leveraging Google My Business content, using the specific words, and then creating pages on your website that use the specific

keywords as well that are common search terms. ⁓ Do those impact the map pack listings as well?

Brennan Smith (15:51)

So

yeah, so that's the age old question.

What affects Google and what doesn't, right? That's Google's kind of, we know a lot of stuff that positively affects it, right? And that's why we do what we do, which is yes, answer your question, yes. The reviews, the content you're posting on your website, the content you're posting on your Google web business page, your local indexing of your website. There's numerous amounts of things that we do on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to constantly show Google that we are, or our clients are, that best answer for best steakhouse near me or whatever.

those keywords are. But then Google is always going to hold 10 to 15 percent as their algorithm, right? That we'll never know. And that's why they make 99.9 percent of their profit off of PPC, right? It's because people come there for that result and they trust it. And that's where going back to like, people just don't go to the website anymore. They'll trust those map packs, the reviews, they'll see it. Google's recommending this. If Google is telling me this is the best

know, steakhouse and I'm going to trust Google, you know, people and that's, you know, industry agnostic for that just user interaction nowadays. But yeah, it's a lot. There's a lot that goes into affecting Google, but absolutely. Those two are definitely, definitely big ones locally.

Robb Fahrion (17:09)

And I mean, and

that goes back to the reality conversation too, right? It's like, okay, yeah, we can have a listing that does sit in top position because okay, the page we were talking about, you you might get below the map pack, but you could still be owning that top listing if it's just like.

Page or keyword that people weren't targeting which that's a lot of times what we're going after is those weak spots where? Okay, you can quickly elevate but you know, we have to have good partners too and that it does stand the test of all right We're not just good marketers or also deliver a good steak and we deliver the best dining experience You know and all those things so because you do run into those situations too, right? It's like okay, we can only do so we can only do so much

Shane Murphy (17:53)

I'm cool.

Robb Fahrion (17:56)

Yeah, we'll generate traffic, but you know at the end of the day people are looking for a good steak Right, they're not looking for a good Google local listing ⁓ optimized profile

such. So that's where it's bringing it to life. That's where now, you know, you're seeing a lot more too of the social component. I mean, we're big believers in the community aspect. I think coming back online in the sense of everyone's talking AI and digital and, but I think people, they want to go out to dinner, you know, they want Friday nights out. They want that community again, what's real. And so you're, getting the need for that in search. And so that's where you're seeing social, creative video content.

That's where you're seeing those pieces become even more critical, right? And so it's like some of these some of these restaurants They're like, you know, they can be like pulling tooth and nail, you know to do a photo shoot of their menu and I'm just like Guys, what are you know, what are we doing? What are we doing here? You know, so you gotta you gotta look at it from that perspective, but it's it's shifting, right? It's it's shifting and now it's just shifting faster and faster. So

Shane Murphy (19:06)

Before we started the show today, there was a point where we were talking through that age-old cycle of you try something new, you see a spike, it plateaus, and then it drops off. But there are ways to extend that and to make sure that you don't just keep hitting this plateau and valley. What suggestions do you have to...

avoid that and maybe maybe just describe some what we were talking about and some of the strategies to to impact that cycle.

Robb Fahrion (19:40)

We might, might, or sorry about it, we might have different, I'll use mine quick and mine is just for me personally with clients and what I recommend is it's diversification, right? I mean, it's like, it's like investing, you know, you're not going to put a hundred percent of your dollars into one.

Brennan Smith (19:40)

Yeah, I would say- ⁓ you gotta go.

Robb Fahrion (20:00)

one stock, right? And I mean, we see clients that we come in and guess what? They've been investing 100 % of their dollars into one thing. And so what do you get? You get all of this, right? So for me, it's just like, let's get this thing more evened out to where then, okay, you're just, you know, you're even, you're more predictable and you can at least, you know, predict that upward trend and start to then, okay, turn it up or down based on how quickly you're

if you want to scale or whatever it is you want to do at that point.

Brennan Smith (20:35)

Yeah, I would also piggyback on that in terms of just being agile also. So by that, mean not only diversifying, but also being open to new ideas in terms of new platforms, new content, new way. Like I would never have thought, you know, you'd have someone doing 15 minute.

15 second highlight reels of someone making a salad right like four years ago ⁓ So but now that's that's what people want right and so Rob and I always say like, 50 % of the time. Yes, you're paying us to do ex service But then the other 50 is we're just free consultants, right? We're gonna tell you what the market's saying and if our strategy we started out a year ago Isn't really relevant will pivot, you know, we need to be agile and pivot to whatever

market is there and to Rob's point, that's diversification, that's additive, not just picking up and moving over, right? That's creating a TikTok, creating new platforms, know, trying different avenues, streams for how you can bring in more customers into your location or ⁓ sell something online, whatever the client may be outside of restaurants.

Robb Fahrion (21:48)

Yeah, and it's it's too just that it's a zero to one mentality, right? Like Peter teal talks. It's a book or whatever But it is true because like even on the marketing front like we can only cover so much ground too, right? It's like, okay We're coming in and we're taking your web funnel your organic traffic your paid media on social your email marketing If it is SMS, let's say and then it's like, okay We're generating all this traffic and it's being fun

to your website and then certain times it's like wow really then the issue is sales enablement right so it's like understanding that it is this progressive growth through your business too and sometimes I mean might not say this to their face or say it very elegantly it's like I don't know that the problem was us guys I think it was more so we didn't

We weren't able to capture the value of the traffic or the new traffic that was generating or we don't even know who was answering this phone. Was anyone answering this phone? Who was responding to these form submissions? Oh, Joe was and his average response time was 36 hours on catering inquiries. Well, yeah, we probably lost a few deals in there, right?

Brennan Smith (23:07)

Yeah. And

that's, that's industry agnostic too. We see is like, yes, we can drive all this traffic. Yes, we can do this. The barrier of entry for digital marketing is very low. It's just a matter of how well you do it. ⁓ and if there's, there's a difference between people that just said it and forget it, or people that are constantly trying to make their campaigns better. We are constantly looking at data. We are constantly adjusting, constantly being agile for using that word there and pivoting where we need to. ⁓ and we see that where.

Robb Fahrion (23:11)

Yeah.

Brennan Smith (23:38)

Yes, we can drive, you know, a hundred, if you want a thousand phone calls, I can run a whole PPC analysis and see how much that's going to cost you. Now, can you handle that? Do you have the people to pick up the phone? It's we've become almost sales site consultants sometimes when people want to scale, scale, scale, and then we do it. And then they're like, ⁓ I didn't get to that email. didn't want to like, guys, this is like fish on the line, like time to reel it in, you know.

Robb Fahrion (24:01)

I didn't know

there was a list of a thousand form submissions. We're like... Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good problem.

Shane Murphy (24:03)

Thank you.

Brennan Smith (24:05)

Yeah.

Shane Murphy (24:08)

Yeah.

Brennan Smith (24:09)

Frustrating. But all good problems, right? It's just solving

them,

Shane Murphy (24:14)

Yeah, I think one of the key things that you're highlighting here is it's not enough to just do the marketing. You have to have the operational processes to be able to capitalize. it's not all about traffic. It's about the conversion of the traffic and what you do to turn that into dollars. And so if that's the response time on, you know, people filling out a form on your website,

for catering or if that's people calling the store, make sure that you can actually, you have the phone staff, you have the ability to give a good customer experience because that then feeds back into, let's get more reviews, let's get a positive buzz. There's a picture of a line out the door that we're using on, or like a 15 second TikTok versus the line around the counter. Those things make big impacts.

Robb Fahrion (24:50)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Right.

Yep.

Shane Murphy (25:10)

and can feed into the marketing. But if you lack the operational execution, you're just lending, you're paying for stuff that never hits the bottom line.

Robb Fahrion (25:17)

Yep, and I-

Yeah, and I

think the dedication too, right? Like long-term forward thinking, right? That like...

You know, this is evolutionary. It's a dynamic market. You know, not only are we competing with people that are doing the exact same thing, you're talking about are people spending money at restaurants right now, right? Or whatever, or is it a slow time of year, right? And so that's where from our side, it's like, look, if you stick with it, dedicated.

You start to figure it out. You start to analyze the data. You start to tie off the loose ends. You you understand the operational components. We'll have to tie that in. ⁓ so I think that's where it becomes like that partnership on our side, right? So like, yeah, a lot of our best engagements, it's like the owner's very dedicated to this, right? Like he gets it. He gets that no matter what happens in July, we're going to move forward and get better in August, right? Not, July.

wasn't good pull the plug on everything from a marketing standpoint right and it's crazy as good as entrepreneurs are a lot of times like that's almost their initial reaction and it goes to me like counter intuitively everything that a mark or that an entrepreneur tends to be right so that for us is key in terms of working with the right people you know and under people that get it see the long-term vision ⁓

You know, and we're gonna have to work together on this, right? Like, this stuff changes every single day. Tomorrow, like, I don't know. What happens if Zapier just, like, ceases to exist? Well, guess what? We're in that boat together and, you know, we're gonna have to figure that out, right? Yeah, that would be wild, but...

Shane Murphy (27:07)

Good job.

Robb Fahrion (27:11)

So it's one of those deals too, in terms of the people we're working with. So it goes both ways. Having really good partners, I think is key too. So make sure you're working with people that value what you're doing and they're understanding too that it's not just get the people to the door and then it just magically turns into revenue. That's just not how it works.

Shane Murphy (27:32)

Totally. Well guys, this has been awesome. We've talked about a lot of different things. We've talked about how to influence that map pack and from getting reviews to building ⁓ keywords into things you're messaging on Google and building your pages to diversifying your marketing mix and making sure your operations are in order to be able to convert. This is all stuff that like

Robb Fahrion (27:59)

Ha

Shane Murphy (28:01)

Any restaurateur can go and implement tomorrow and should be implementing and have this, like you just said Rob, constantly learning from it and keep on going. Don't give up on this because it can be hard to learn and figure out in the beginning. But if you just keep advancing and taking learnings one month after another, you begin to see the results happening. And so I hope that the listeners

Robb Fahrion (28:12)

Yes. Yes.

Shane Murphy (28:29)

take advantage of the gold that you've dropped today. ⁓ How can this audience learn more about you guys and your group?

Robb Fahrion (28:41)

anyone take that?

Brennan Smith (28:41)

Yeah, Rob.

Yeah, sure. ⁓ So flyingvgroup.com. I think on Instagram we're at flyingvgroup as well on X. ⁓ Yeah, give us a call if you need anything from digital marketing or just happy to chat. We're trying to, we're solving different puzzles in different industries. It's just a matter of what type of services may apply or what don't. So yeah, flyingvgroup.com is the best place to go there.

Shane Murphy (29:11)

Thank you both for sharing your insights and experiences today. This is awesome.

Robb Fahrion (29:16)

Thanks so much, Shane.

Brennan Smith (29:16)

Thanks Shane.

Shane Murphy (29:18)

All right, have a good, great day.