Melih Oztalay is the Founder and CEO of Smartfinds Internet Marketing, an agency that focuses on marketing processes and strategic activities based on using multiple web marketing channels.
Melih has been in the marketing industry since 1987. He helps companies with various internet marketing needs, including conversion rate optimization. He has worked with different clients, from manufacturers to automotive suppliers, franchisors, and more.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- How has the marketing landscape changed since 1987?
- Why Melih Oztalay chose a career in marketing
- Melih shares what it’s like selling insurance to 25-year-olds and 35-year-olds back in 2007
- The compounding effect of social media marketing
- Influencer marketing dynamics
- Conversion rate optimization (CRO) timeless fundamentals
- CRO live case studies
In this episode…
Back in the day when internet marketing was in its infancy, how would you sell health insurance to the hard-to-reach people who think they don’t need it? Now that the landscape has evolved and there are countless websites, how do you win over more of your existing website visitors?
Timeless fundamentals. That could be a deep dive into your target customers, marketing directly to them, deploying the compounding effect of social media, or some other tactic. No matter how fast things change in the industry, these timeless tactics will hold up. The problem is, are you utilizing the fundamentals?
Listen to this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast with Dr. Jeremy Weisz featuring Melih Oztalay, Founder and CEO of Smartfinds Internet Marketing. They discuss the marketing fundamentals that have kept Melih in the industry for 35 years, how he used the compounding effect of social media to drive results, influencer marketing dynamics, conversion rate optimization, and more.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Special Mentions:
Related Episode(s):
- “P90X: Earning Food & Rent Money as a Mime to over $500 million in Sales- with Tony Horton [Business Inspiration]”
- “[Top Israel Leader Series] Finding the Guts to Thrive During Hard Times with Dr. Erica Miller”
Sponsor for this episode
At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 100 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.
We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.
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The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.
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We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.
Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.
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Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
Insider Stories from Top Leaders & Entrepreneurs…
Episode Transcript
Jeremy Weisz 0:19
Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of InspiredInsider.com, I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. And I’m going to introduce Melih in a second formerly from Smartfinds Marketing. But before I do Melih, I always like to mention other episodes, people check out on the podcast. And there’s some been some interesting ones throughout the years, I suggest checking out the one with Tony Horton, who was one of the founders of P90x, if you’ve ever watched P90x, he’s got some amazing story about, you know, it’s not just the success Melih, as you know, you work with a lot of CEOs, founders, it’s sometimes the tough times, that leads to success. But we often see on the other hand, he actually made money as a street mine, when he was in California, and that’s how he made his student rent money before selling, I think, you know, they’ve sold hundreds of millions of dollars of P90x DVDs and other programs, but it wasn’t always like that. So check out that, you know, and many, many more on InspiredInsider.com. And this episode is brought to you by Rise25 at Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships and partnerships. And we do that by helping you run your podcast, you know, I’ve been doing this for over a decade now, I always tell people, mainly the number one thing in my life is relationships, I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships and profile them and their expertise and their company. And I found no better way to do that than have them on my podcast over the past over decades. So if you thought about starting a podcast, you know, you should, if you have questions, you can go to Rise25.com Email us happy to answer any questions my business partner and I have been doing this both of us for over a decade. So, let us know. And I am excited to introduce Melih Oztalay and he is the Founder of Smartfinds Marketing. And you know, talking about decades of experience, Melih, you know, he started his marketing firm in 1987. He helps companies on a variety of things, but most slight, most recently, they’re really focusing in on improving their conversion rate optimization for websites and companies. They use digital marketing, websites, social media, mobile local listings, they’ve done it all. And specifically, they can help you improve your conversion on your website. And they work from a variety of types of clients, from manufacturers, to automotive suppliers to franchisors to telecom and he has been a an expert, strategic you know, really relationship to lots of CEOs CMOS to on unlock their marketing success. Melih, thanks for joining me.
Melih Oztalay 3:04
Hey, Jeremy is great. Be on your show. History.
Jeremy Weisz 3:08
Yeah, big shout out to Gerri Knilans of Trade Press Services who actually introduced us and she’s, uh, you know, check out Trade Press Services. She’s also just a remarkable human being I have I’ve gotten to know over the years as well is great. And she introduced another great, great guest, Erica Miller, who was a Holocaust survivor, and tells her story, and she opened a chain of successful clinics after she came to the US so. So Melih, tell me a little bit more about what was the landscape like, and when you started in 1987, and how things, you know, progressed to where they are right now.
Melih Oztalay 3:57
You know, Jeremy, I think just like you’re doing now, for the last 10 day, for the last 10 years. You know, you find a way to take this knowledge and experiences and figure out how to share it, how do you give back, so to speak? And there’s no question that the last 35 years have been very interesting, originally, strictly, you know, traditional marketing firm. And then I started the Internet Group in 94. And that was, a lot of that was very interesting. We were the wild wild west of the 1990s. It was great. The internet was free, so to speak. When I say free, I mean free, free to do anything, right. You got 14 dot for modems. You got we had Yahoo Netscape. I remember a buddy of mine, where we, you know, who’s helped me start up the ISPs division. You know, he used to work at Sun Microsystems. We went down to the Sun Microsystems office back in those days. He showing me Netscape how thrilled he is with the Internet. Like, that was the starting point for the whole thing. And, you know, Yahoo, Netscape 14.4 modems, that’s where it all started. And then you kind of move on from there, so to speak,
