TRS 017: Tom Hayden VP of Marketing at National Notary Association

Marcus:   Hey, marketers and business leaders! This is Marcus Grimm from Web Talent Marketing; we’re here on The Revenue Stream. You know, I’ve got a question for you. What is one of the most important functions of business that is part of virtually every transaction that you’ve ever been a part of for more than $10,000 and yet, in and of itself, might be one of the few remaining bargains here in the USA? You need a few more hints? Okay, well if you’ve ever done any of the following, you’ve needed this service. If you’ve bought or sold a house, if you bought or sold a car, and if you’ve ever written a will and you kind of wanted to make certain it stands up in court. Chances are you might have figured out what I’m talking about. I’m talking about notaries, those people whose job it is to say you are who in fact you really are.

Marcus:   They’re frequently required by law for these transactions, and yet these services to us often costs about $5 give or take. Like I said, it’s one of the few remaining bargains we have out there. Well today we’re going to be learning all about notaries, but if that doesn’t seem on topic enough for you on The Revenue Stream, you’re going to be learning about it from one of the leaders of marketing for the National Notary Association, an association that spends and makes more from ecommerce than you would ever imagine. That’s right, folks. Today we’ve got Tom Hayden, the Vice President of Marketing for the National Notary Association. Tom, welcome to The Revenue Stream.

Tom:   Thank you for inviting me to join The Revenue Stream podcast. I’m always excited to sit down with smart people and talk shop.

Marcus:   We’ll see if we can live up to the sound like a smart guy! You know, Tom, when I first came to Web Talent Marketing last year and I learned about our long relationship with National Notary Association, quite frankly, my mind was blown by you guys. I had no idea that the vertical was so vibrant. I had no idea that your organization was so massive and no idea that your ecomm business was just so strong. So I think before we get into the marketing toolbox and what you guys are doing, we’ve got to bring listeners up to speed on this industry. How many notaries are there out there today? And I was shocked, too shocked to learn that this business isn’t going anywhere.

Tom:   You know, I was kind of the same way when I first got my job at the NNA, that was about 10 years ago. Now there’s 4.2 to 4.4 million notaries in the United States. The number fluctuates slightly year over year based on how many people are expiring and how many people are becoming a notary. At the macro level, the notary populations growth or retraction seems to correlate with kind of an increase or decrease in employment. What is the labor mobility– can people get promotions? And interest rates. Those seem to be factors that impact how the notary population grows or shrinks. Over 75% of people that become notaries, it’s because their boss is telling them, “You’re the notary now. You’ve got to go out and figure out how to do this.”

Marcus:   They’re volun-told.

Tom:   Yes, their bosses have adorned you as the notary for the office or for the store. You know, we are lucky. We don’t create the need that they have, but once that need is created, we’re trying to be there to help them through that process.

Marcus:   Yeah, it’s interesting to me. Tom, you and I are of a similar vintage, and I think, of those industries that have been replaced by the internet or severely impacted by the internet– If you would have asked me 20 years ago, I would’ve thought that that the increase in digital business would have really become a threat to notaries, but they really largely have been unimpacted by the internet. True?

Tom:   Yeah. First, let’s step back and look at what a notary does. Trust is essential in all legal transactions that we complete. As you said, if you’re purchasing your home, you’re getting a will done, the establishment of a power attorney, we all have to trust that that document or that transaction is being done by the person in the same. The notarization of document or transaction instills that trust in the document. The purpose of the notarization is really to authenticate that that document or the transaction is done right. Is the signature genuine? Two: did the signer act without duress or intimidation, so not being forced to sign the document. And three: they intended the terms of the document, what’s in the document. The notary is the individual appointed by the state to make sure that that is done right. They’re the public witness of that notarization.

Tom:   In short, they really help defer fraud around these documents. In a digital world, the reason a notary exists still is the same. The digital world just changes how the documents, the signer, and the notary engage each other through that process. Electronic notarization is what they call it, and really there’s really two types. There’s the in-person electronic notarization. That’s where the document and the notarization are done electronically, but the signer and the notary are still physically together and meeting during that signing. For remote online notarization, otherwise known as RON, the document and the notarization are electronic and then for the notary it’s a Skype type of engagement where they can see each other face to face. Also, kind of why they’re still needed is the law states and still require that recording are done and that they’re done with a notary.

Marcus:   And that’s a huge Aha for me. This industry, it’s not going anywhere. Now, the second big thing that I found really, really fascinating is we’re not really specifically talking about one industry. I know in your case, one of the things that you’ve talked to me about, one of the reasons this business is way more complex than the listener would realize is these laws… Yes, basically, a notary is a notary is a notary, except there are nuances that apply in each state. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Tom:   Yeah. The role of a notary is really at the state level, it’s not federal. And like states like to do, every state has its own process and requirements for becoming a notary or renewing a notary commission. For example, California, where we are, requires six hours of training, an exam, you need to get your fingerprint, and background screening all before you can apply. Once you are commissioned by the state, you then have to get a bond, you have to get a seal, and you have to get a journal.

Tom:   In Pennsylvania you see that same type of requirement versus a state like New Jersey where you just have to go complete an online application and file an oath with your county. You’re really having to build marketing programs and customer experiences for those individuals. So each state really is its own market: different offerings, different processes, and a different customer experience.

Marcus:   Let me just break in there. Quick question: Is there a reciprocity between states in some cases?

Tom:   There are. There are few states that do that where, if you’re commissioned in one state, you can work in the next state, but that’s not usually the standard case. So oftentimes some people have to carry dual commissions where they have a commission in the state they live in and then they have a commission in the state that they work in. A good example might be New Jersey and New York.

Marcus:   That makes sense. So the laws are different, but I guess how you conduct yourself would also be different from state to state, right?

Tom:   You know, foundationally there are really the same things that you’re doing. We have the Five Steps to Notarization. Each state just really prescribes what you have to do by law or by statute, and then really the rest is just best practices, the things that you should do as a notary to protect yourself, not get sued, and to provide a great signing experience for your customer. You mix all of that together and it gets rather complex.

Marcus:   Yeah, so that’s just a tremendous amount of information that you guys need to provide. So one of the things that you’ve talked about is you are a real content forward organization– content marketing from the beginning, right?

Tom:   Yeah. It’s really about helping the customer get through that process and content is what they’re looking for. Information is what they’re looking for. S so that’s really what we provide. This isn’t something that customers or people are doing every single day. So it’s really new to them as they come into the process.

Marcus:   One of the things I think is really interesting is the cost for me to get a notary is pretty cheap, but these best practices and adherence to these laws matter because the stakes are relatively high if you’re a notary and you perhaps don’t do your job correctly, right?

Tom:   Yeah. The stakes are high. They’re public officials, but they can be sued if they did something wrong with the document or the transaction. Oftentimes, notaries just get sued along with the lawyers that may have been involved, with title companies that may have been involved. So oftentimes when a notarization is done, it’s done for big things like your house or your savings, and because of that notaries have a liability. Some states put that as a bond that they need to carry, which protects the public. So a signer can, if there’s an issue and a claim, it can go against the bond, but in a notary can also carry insurance, which allows them to be protected. So if they get sued, they can have some protections.

Marcus:   And we’re starting to move into– a savvy listeners might be figuring out here– some of the products that you guys actually make available for purchase. So that almost brings us to the NNA. When we look at these two facts, here’s what we’ve figured out now. We’ve figured out there are a lot of notaries out there, and this is a far more complex industry than I think anyone realizes. So, not surprisingly, when you have a robust membership and you have the opportunity for a lot of education, that’s kind of where associations are born. So tell us a little bit about the story of the NNA and how it came to be.

Tom:   Yeah, so the NNA was established, I think, in 1957 as the California Notary Association. It came about to fill a void for notaries, providing them with education, guidance, tools, and advocacy that was really desperately needed to help them properly perform their critical fraud-deterring duties. In 1964, we expanded to be a national organization and really moved our products and offerings across all the states. The mission statement of the NNA is committed to serving notaries and their employers, because employers have a skin in the game oftentimes. We share knowledge with them. We’re building community, and we’re promoting sound professional standards of practice that really benefit and protect the notary and the public that they are serving.

Tom:   A key thing that’s happened throughout the history of the NNA has been, at the forefront, advocating for notaries while working with local notaries and state officials to modernize the notarial tutorial laws. Notaries go back centuries, and the laws need to be updated as transactions, documents, and the things that are related to them become more sophisticated. The NNA has developed and updated the Model Notary Act and the notary public code of professional responsibility, which are used by state legislators to really develop the tutorial laws and statutes for their own states. Part of what we do is also help people become and renewed their notary commission as easily as possible and provide them with the tools they need to perform their duties safely. In terms of the retail side of the NNA, it has been in that content marketing game for years. It’s always interesting. So many people like to think content marketing is as new and cool thing, but it’s really been here for years.

Tom:   The NNA used to mail a magazine and newsletters and they included the catalog with it. The magazine and the newsletters were the information. They were the content that the people could learn from and gain more knowledge. And then with that knowledge they would be able to look in the catalog, and that’s how we sold them the training, insurance, and supplies that they learned about and figured out that they needed. Today we’re really doing the same thing. That magazine and that mailed newsletter are replaced by our website knowledge center, our blog, our e-newsletters that we send out. It’s all still providing your customer with information and then making it easy for them to purchase the products and services that you talk about.

Marcus:   It is a robust marketing program for sure. And we’re going to talk about some of those different products and services that you offer them. Before we dive into those though, I do want to spend a couple of minutes– associations always talk about membership, which in your case I would kind of think of as attracting new notaries or as well as gathering renewals. Without giving away specifics, I took a look– listeners should be aware you are one of our clients and have been for several years. I took a look at your pay per click data, and the fact of the matter is that paper click is driving a much larger number of monthly conversions for new notaries than it even was a couple of years ago. So that would tell us one of two things. Either it confirms the vitality of your industry, that more and more people are becoming notaries. But I also assume that it shows that the NNA has decided we are really going to spend more to go after that member. So talk to me a little bit about where pay per click fits into your world for attracting new notaries.

Tom:   Definitely a key channel for us. A few years ago we did a number of focus groups and surveys, and we learned that the majority of notaries find out on how to become a notary or how to renew their commission by Googling it. In fact, in one of the focus groups, we had a lady who had been commissioned before Google existed. Yet in the focus group, she said, “No, I learned about becoming notary from Google.” So a lot of people really think that’s where they go to get information. So with that knowledge, we determined that we really needed to dominate the first page of Google search to be successful in driving traffic, especially in that “become market” where they’re just starting out brand new and really don’t have a lot of information. That meant that we had to be aggressive with our pay per click program.

Tom:   So in partnership with Web Talent, and really with your guidance, we revamped our Google account to enable greater control and bidding flexibility to really go after very specific key words that drove profitable traffic to our website. Now, that was just what we did at that milestone, and now we’re constantly just in testing campaigns and bid strategies to optimize overall growth. So it’s really been key to us. Our growth over the last couple of years has been from the growth from pay per click. One of the other things we start to really look at is just not look at pay per click as a single click coming into our website, or a phone call into our call center. What we’ve been looking at is that it’s really part of that customer journey. For a significant number of customers, that first click/ interaction is pay per click, but then that final purchase click is an organic search or direct to our website. This really fits with, you know, that life cycle discussion where people start with a broader terms and looking and then narrow down to the companies. And that’s really kind of the pattern that we’re seeing with our NNA-branded type of traffic

Marcus:   That makes a lot of sense and definitely fits with what you’re trying to do. Now, the other thing. It’s great that you sell somebody a notary commission, but you also have– again, because few people wake up and say, “I want to be a notary today.” This is something they have to do for their job. Renewals are part of it. So just to help people understand; how long is a certification good for, and what are some of the main drivers for renewals?

Tom:   So the length of a notaries commission, again as you probably guessed, varies by state. So it could be three years, four years, five years. We have some that go up to 10 years, and I think there’s maybe one that for maybe for your lifetime. So if the notary’s going to renew, that really is dependent on if they still need to be the notary– if they still have that as their job responsibility. A few notaries kind of figure out that, “Hey, I can make money with this commission. I can be a mobile notary. I can be a signing agent.” Those are the individuals that come out and are doing the loan signings with you. I can do this for car purchases, and I can make money off it. It’s a very small percentage of the overall notaries, but those are the individuals that are saying, “Hey, this is a business to me, and I need to renew.”

Tom:   So our renewal state marketing programs are truly multichannel campaigns. We utilize direct mail. Yes, I said it direct mail. We use email., We social advertising and posting on Facebook, LinkedIn, and those type of platforms. We do a lot of digital advertising to reach notaries when their commission is up for renewal. And we kind of try to coordinate that across channels. At the same time you get an email from us saying it’s time to renew, you may log on and see an advertisement in you Gmail Account that we’ve put out there. The number of outbound contacts that we make as part of this really differs by state and also by whether they are a customer or a prospect. So our team really works hard at this. We do testing of emails, we do testing of advertising, we do testing of direct mail, all of it to see what kind of traffic we can drive from these outbound contacts, and then convert that traffic.

Marcus:   So it’s a robust program to get new notaries. You’ve got a multichannel approach to retain them as notaries. And now we get into all these other ancillary products and services that just really just layer on top of this machine that you guys have. So let’s talk about, looking at the website, you guys offer training. So how is training offered, and where does that fit kind of in the customer journey?

Tom:   So the customer journey, it’s interesting. It’s unique in that 90% of our customers only deal with us when they become a notary or when they renew their notary commission. They really have no need to buy an additional stamp– they don’t even come close to filling out their journal as part of the process. So they really only come to us during those kind of commissioning milestones. That means that we really need to try and sell everything that they need along with that purchase of becoming or renewing a notary commission. Not wanting to give away kind of that secret sauce, but what we’ve really started to do there is we create predefined packages of items and we sell those bundles at a discount. We utilize complex sales funnels that inform them about their commission process. We’ve given them information as part of the purchase, and then we offer additional valuable products that can be purchased along with the package items.

Tom:   The packages will include the items that are required by the state. So if your state requires a stamp, requires a bond, or training, that’s what we’re going to have in there. We spend a lot of time analyzing those packages and analyzing the effectiveness of our sales funnels to really optimize that customer experience and conversion. So in regards, I’ll get back to your question in regards to train specifically, we’re really settling it two ways. One part of the package you want, it’s required by state and as a funnel add on when it’s not required and that they’re really trying to gain education because there’s nothing worse than if you could go do your first notarization in front of your boss and you stumble through it and really kind of look like you don’t what you’re doing. A lot of people sit there and say, “Oh, it’s a notarization. You’re just signing a document and filling out a journal.” Well, it’s a little bit more complicated than that, and if you get some training that goes along with it, you’re going to look really professional in front of your boss or your customers.

Marcus:   Right. Who was the one who told you to become a notary in the first place!

Tom:   Yeah, absolutely!

Marcus:   So we’ve got this training piece, but one of the things that I want to talk about is, because the stakes are high, because the risk is high, you all also offer insurance and bonds. So how does that fit in?

Tom:   So with insurance and bonds, the bonds are required by the state. So we sell those, and those are really protecting the public because that’s where they can go and put a claim against a notary if there’s an issue with the notarization. Insurance is really about protecting the notary. So if they make an error, they omit something that’s part of the process, they are covered and protected. We also have our membership product which provides the information to notaries that helps them protect themselves as well. The first thing we try and do with those products, is to get them to buy them for the length of the commissions– again, at that time that they are becoming a notary or at the time they’re renewing their commission. If we can get that, then we’re not chasing them to get renewals.

Tom:   They’re protected for the length of their commission and they get access to information that helps them do their job. If they don’t buy them with the package, well, we kick off wit a direct mail and email drip campaigns to reinforce the value of those products and see if, with more knowledge, they would purchase it. If they do buy, but it’s not for the length of their commission, again, our multichannel marketing kicks in. When it’s time for renewal, we’re using direct mail, we’re using email, social advertising, posting those different types of tools out there that we have to get them to renew. We also use internal banner ads on our website as well as in our blog. So when we recognize them coming in, we can display a renewal ad for them.

Marcus:   So I’m guessing here, Tom, and this isn’t something that you and I have talked about. But I’m guessing also that you know so much. You know, what state these people in, you know when they became a notary, when they’re up for renewal, do they have insurance. I’m guessing that you’ve got a pretty robust CRM as the anchor for all of this.

Tom:   We have a ton of data. We’re working on upgrading our technology. Right now I think it’s a lot more on the shoulders of our people, and we’ll be getting better technology that will help them do a better job of managing this or orchestrating the interaction with our customers.

Marcus:   Well said. It’s funny, you and I have talked about things that I never thought of with notaries. We’ve talked about training, we’ve talked about insurance, we’ve talked about bonds, but when you say notary, I say stamp. So I’m going to go out on a limb and say you probably sell quite a few notary stamps as well.

Tom:   We do. We sell a lot of them, and they’re fun to play with around the office because we actually do the manufacturing ourselves in the office on those stamps. Yeah, we sell a lot of stamps. The majority of those are sold with the packages because the majority of the stamps are required by the state for completing a notarization. But stamps aren’t the only tools that we sell to notaries. We sell certificates, we sell books, we sell journals, embossers, other items that the notaries need. And for these items, we run the gamut. We do drip campaigns out to our customers. We do pay per click advertising. We do a lot of social media and different platform-type of postings. So we’re kind of there always engaging our customers looking to be there at the right time when they need to make an Avery purchase or, or buy one of these products.

Marcus:   Right; makes a lot of sense. So I’m going to take a little bit of a diversion here. You’re Tom Hayden, and I want to talk a little bit about Tom Heymann. You know, sometimes in business, we give a little too much credit to the CEO, but from some of the stories you’ve told me, I feel like this, I termed it, marketing aggression. You guys are such an aggressive marketing company. It truly does seem to come from the top in your case. Tell us a little bit about Tom Heymann and what he’s brought to the NNA.

Tom:   Sure. Though I’m not sure I’d call it marketing aggression, I do like it! But I’m not sure I’d call it that. So among the great things that Tom brought to the NNA, I think the two key things were his strong background in retail and in customer service. Tom’s background before coming to the NNA– he had senior executive level roles in service-intense education, retail, and restaurant organizations. So that probably doesn’t mean much, but it’s organizations like The Disney Store where he was the president. He was the president of Mastros Restaurants and the Chairman and CEO of Knowledge Learning Corporation, most people know that as KinderCare Learning Centers. All very stream focused on customer service and in retail. In fact, early on in some meetings you’d catch him calling our customers guests because of his days at Disney. So it was always funny when he kind of popped that in.

Tom:   But I think what really has shaped the success– you kind of hinted at what some of the questions were going to be, and so I actually talked to Tom about this one last night. He thinks, and I agree with him, that the success of our marketing is really the mixing of Tom’s retail experience and my experience with data-driven direct marketing. We really challenge each other, and therefore challenge the entire marketing team, to look at things differently. Well, what’s our pricing strategy? What’s our promotion and packaging strategy? Really kind of a retail approach overlaid with how do you utilize technology to really engage your customer? I think the other thing that happened that when Tom joined is he’s got a hyper focus on providing great customer service.

Tom:   He gets the importance of content marketing and providing information to your customers as part of the purchase process. So what that meant is there was really no need of convincing him about the need for content marketing. When talking to my peers at other marketing organizations, oftentimes they’re in saying, “Well, we need someone to help write content. We’ve got to create content. We’ve got to create content.” And it’s like, well, figure out how to do it. That wasn’t the approached Tom had. He gets it. If you answer the question your customer’s asking as part of the customer life cycle, provide them with a great experience, the sales will follow.

Marcus:   There you go.

Tom:   He gets the value of meaningful content in today’s world. I’ll give an example of that. He fully supported an SEO initiative that we did in partnership with you guys at Web Talent. He supported it with the allocation of NNA internal resources to create content, to revamp old content, and really overhaul the structure of our website. The goal was getting back to dominating the first page of Google search. The goal was to improve the ranking of our pages for numerous keywords. The results widely, widely exceeded our expectation, and the initiative has delivered really significant growth to the NNA. Kind of the outcome, a nice side one, was that for that initiative, Web Talent and the NNA received a Best in Class Award for search engine optimization from eTail, a large internet digital marketing association that puts on conferences, I think, internationally.

Marcus:   Right, right. And I love that the National Notary Association that won that award up against some really strong ecomm players. Now, one of the things that you’ve talked about is that strong belief in content marketing. And boy, that’s a fortunate thing to have in a CEO and also the support of your team. You’ve got a pretty robust team over there. Tell us how it’s currently staffed, and if you’re comfortable, tell us where you might see it going in the next couple of years.

Tom:   Yeah, so we’re a pretty traditional looking marketing organization. Within it, we’ve got product management, creative services, production, program, marketing, reporting, and digital marketing. You’d see kind of the traditional roles and responsibilities within those functional teams. The key to our success is that really the functional reporting lines and groupings don’t mean that much to us. The marketing teams are just highly collaborative and they work together really well. We work really hard to create alignment and then let the people run with it and come up with innovative ways to think about our business. It’s hard to do that within a 60 plus year old company. Oftentimes, we sometimes feel like we’re a startup in some of the ways that we approach some of those things.

Marcus:   That is so cool to hear from traditional businesses. That is not something we would expect to hear from an organization like yourselves. That creates a fun workplace.

Tom:   Yeah, it’s absolutely a fun workplace. And what also is there is that we have a strong partnership with our communications team. The communication team sits outside of marketing, but again, it’s that reporting structure doesn’t matter much. Even though they’re outside, the marketing and our comms team work really close. We’re almost as one, as they go through this. So kind of looking at what other the things I do for our marketing organization is– There’s one area I do augment for my internal staff, and that’s the digital marketing agency. As we’ve said, it’s Web Talent. That’s the area I’ve looked to augment with external resources really because I can’t afford even get the same level expertise that an agency like Web Talent brings to the partnership. We just wouldn’t be able to have that type of individual or those skillsets within our organization.

Tom:   Over the next few years, I think we’ll continue to add specialists roles within the marketing organization. For example, we’ve recently added a video producer role and we’ve created a new position for digital paid media manager. As areas such as video and paid advertising become more important to our organization, we will add the specialized skills to help us manage, coordinate, and execute within those specialized channels

Marcus:   That is a robust team, and, I think, a great example of companies that are super serious about marketing. How how they should approach it. So you’ve got all these stars in place. What are some of the big initiatives your team’s looking at right now?

Tom:   One big initiative that we’re looking at is we’re moving to an agile marketing approach. I think we’re more than halfway through that transition. We did a good job of transitioning our creative service and production processes to an, agile kind of sprint process, but we’re lagging behind in our planning and culture.

Marcus:   That’s a big initiative! What have you learned throughout that process?

Tom:   It’s been interesting! The first thing I’ve learned is you just can’t pick up a software agile methodology and drop it into a marketing organization. I figured out that marketing kind of requires a hybrid approach because marketing in the end is different than software development. So we’ve had some kind of growing pains due to that. I think secondly, it’s one thing that just move to agile processes. It’s another thing to move to an agile marketing approach. That really is culture, and that’s harder to change. It changes the way you view lead in terms of the head of the marketing organization. Also your line managers, change the way they lead. It changes the way people feel about failing because it’s, again, do something quick, learn from it, iterate, continue to move on.

Tom:   And it changes the way you think about campaigns. Previously in more of a waterfall approach from a marketing organization, if you wanted to roll out a new series of renewal campaigns, you’d build out the whole campaign and you would do an A/B split, put part of the customers through this one/ part of your customers through the other one. And see what happens. I think with the agile approach, it’s a lot more smaller. So if you want to redo your renewal campaigns, you’re changing the subject line, testing that. You’re changing some copy, your testing that. You’re adding another effort, you’re learning from that and you’re changing that. So those are really kind of the cultural changes that are happening as we’re trying to move to be more agile.

Tom:   Other than that agile initiative, we’re just grinding away. That’s really what it is. You’re grinding day to day. Marketing can get so complex. So many channels, so many customer touch points, so many data. I was actually having a conversation few months ago with a candidate that we had in, and I was thinking back to– I’m dating myself here– when I first started marketing, I was like, “Okay, I can fax out something to someone. I can do a listing in a newspaper.” The number of channels were just so small. The exponential growth of those channels is just mind blowing, and it’s so complex.

Tom:   So I really try and simplify marketing for our team. So what we’re doing is how can we drive more traffic to the NNA, whether that’s a web visitor or a phone call. How are we doing that? What are we doing to increase conversion? So that’s conversion on a page, that’s conversion on the phone, that’s conversion as a purchase. And then how are we increasing average order? How are we packaging? What’s the value we’re providing that gets them to spend more money with us? So we’re grinding every day to make a positive impact on one of those three things. Now, I know we could debate should there be a fourth one about customer and increasing customer engagement. But I think that debate can go on for a while. So it may be a topic for another Revenue Stream podcast.

Marcus:   Yeah. I’ll tell you what, we would love to have you back to discuss that for certain.

Marcus:   Well, hey, marketers and business leaders! Tom Hayden has been a blast here from the National Notary Association, but you know what that sound means. It means we’re nearly at the end, which means Mr. Hayden, we are ready for the Marketing Minute. Are you ready, sir?

Tom:   Sure.

Marcus:   All right, here we go. First question: Apple or Android?

Tom:   Apple.

Marcus:   All right, second question: On your wrist, sir, do we see a bare wrist, a smartwatch, or a Timex?

Tom:   Well, since it’s a seven o’clock out here, you would see nothing. But normally you would see a traditional watch.

Marcus:   All right. Outstanding. If I were to watch your web browsing practices, ad blocker or no,

Tom:   No; how else do you learn? Come on! If you’re blocking other people’s ads– Hey, in marketing, I don’t have to be the first to do something, but if I’m going to do it and take it from you, I’m going to make sure I do it the best I can.

Marcus:   A man after my own heart. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Let’s talk about your television habits. Are you in fact a cord cutter, or are you a cable-holic?

Tom:   You know, I don’t know how to answer that one. If I’m hanging with my kids, I’m a cord cutter. If I’m sitting with my wife, we’re in front of the TV on cable.

Marcus:   Alright, living in both worlds! And now this– You know, it’s funny. People answer this final question differently as a marketer or as a person. I want you to answer this one as a person, Tom. Would we find you hanging out more on Facebook or LinkedIn?

Tom:   As a person, you’d find me on Facebook because there’s nothing more important than friends and family in the end. That’s why we do all of this, isn’t it?

Marcus:   Very, very well said. This has been a Tom Hayden from the National Notary Association. Tom, thank you. We have learned so much. How can people learn more about the National Notary Association?

Tom:   You can visit our website at nationalnotary.org

Marcus:   Outstanding. Hey, folks, really appreciate Tom Hayden for coming on the program today. You been listening to The Revenue Stream, and I’m Marcus Grimm with Web Talent Marketing.