Amine Bentahar on Doing Your Bit For Struggling Businesses During COVID-19

Welcome to another episode of the Marketing Growth podcast. I’m your host, Shane Barker, and I’ve been talking with Amine Bentahar about his digital marketing agency and their approach. We’re going to pivot the conversation a bit today and discuss how they’re helping small businesses weather the impact of the COVID-19 crisis.

Since you guys are always pushing the envelope—whether it’s voice search or TikTok—what current projects are you working on? Any stealth projects you can’t really talk about? I know that defeats the whole point of calling it a stealth project, but still. Anything fun? I mean, you guys are obviously crushing it in search and everything else you’re doing. I know you’re working on something. Just talking to you for 40 minutes—I can tell. You might not want to tell everybody, but I know there’s something.

I love that, man. It’s funny—we’ve had such similar paths. We did something not exactly like what you’re doing, but I talked to my team after seeing the same thing. A lot of small businesses were reaching out, but with small budgets, right? Nothing we could take on that would actually gain traction.

Like, great—I could help for $500, but anything I tell you is going to have next steps, and those need to be done, and that costs money. And someone will take your money, which is what always made me feel bad. I’d say, “Save your money. No one’s going to crush it for $500. Let me show you what you need to do instead.”

So what we did is I started working with the SBA through the SBDC. SBA has the billions of dollars allocated for businesses, and the SBDC is the boots-on-the-ground consulting side. I started working with them maybe three or four months ago. Not that I needed the job—I’ve got my consulting firm—but we can now offer free consulting for small and medium-sized businesses.

I saw the same need: how can I help make businesses more visible without charging them for consulting that’s going to run $10,000? How can we literally just get them on the map? I love that you guys were thinking the same way. A lot of businesses don’t even know where to start. And the problem is, they’ll hire someone and have no idea what that SEO person is doing. They’re not sure if it’s good or bad.

You guys have a price point and a process. You’re saying, “We’re going to look at these ten things, this is our system,” and now you can run them through and really help. That’s awesome. Good things are going to come from that.

I love that. You know, one thing about this whole COVID situation that’s made me smile is seeing more people like us—people with agencies who can really help businesses—step up. And even if businesses don’t have a big budget, it’s like, how do we help?

They still need help. But it’s not like you talk to them twice and boom—their whole business is online and running. It doesn’t work that way.

That’s what I love: you’re not looking to make a ton of money off this. You’re looking at how to make an impact. And I’ve seen more of that, even during all the crazy with COVID, politics, and everything else. I love that at your core, you’re thinking about how to help people—even at a low price point—and still make a big impact.

You don’t hear that enough. But the last few guests I’ve had on this podcast, almost all of them were doing the same thing—asking, “How can we help?” I wish more people were doing that. So I really commend you for that.

Exactly. I’m really hoping this whole COVID thing ends up bringing people closer. I know right now it feels divided, because of everything else going on, but I’m hopeful this helps bring people together—so we can all help each other and make things better. Because yeah, it’s crazy out there.

At this point, I want to take a moment to reach out to our listeners. If you need help going digital or amplifying your online presence, my team and I can help. Whether it’s PR, SEO, CRO, social media marketing, or influencer marketing, reach out at ShaneBarker.com—we’d be happy to help you grow your business.

So cool. Now that we’ve got a good idea of who you are, your background, your agency, and the cool things you’re doing, I’m gonna move you into the fourth part of this. This is where the hard questions come. I hope you’re sitting down—most people aren’t ready for this.

Just giving you a heads up—I come at you fast, like a machine gun. No pressure. I did a little research and it looks like growing up, you wanted to be a soccer player, right? Was that accurate?

See, my team goes deep. We know everything. We’re kind of like Google. Well… Google knows a little more than we do. So let’s say you could wine and dine—though that always sounds weird—two soccer players, past or present. Who would be at your dinner table?

Obviously. Everything about that guy—looks like God spent a little extra time on him. A little paintbrush. Perfect jawline.

Yeah, and back then, they didn’t have the supplements and science and all that. Imagine if he had today’s resources. Just crazy. He clearly had natural talent, and trained hard, too.

I played soccer growing up. I wasn’t bad, just a little aggressive. But I knew early on I wasn’t going pro. Still, especially in a lot of other countries, soccer—or football—is absolutely massive. It’s insane.

Alright, here comes the next one. You did fine on that last one, but this next one might throw you off. If you could have any superpower—like X-Men level stuff—what would it be?

What would you do with time travel? Would you go full Marty McFly, Back to the Future style? Would you change stuff? Maybe go back to that one girl you met at 19? I don’t know if you’re married—I probably shouldn’t say that. Don’t admit anything.

You hear that? All right—single and mingling. So why would you go back in time? What would you do?

Gotcha, gotcha. So a few things happened, but if you look at historically, what you’ve done— it’s a pretty good run. And you’re not done here.

That’s awesome. All right, so this last one is kind of similar to the first question. If you could have dinner, dessert, coffee, or a beer with three people—any three, from anywhere in the world, living or dead—who would they be? I always ask this because I’m curious where people pull their answers from. It can be anyone—not just soccer.

Yeah, how do you even? That’s crazy. I wouldn’t be happy after 27 years in prison. I’m not coming out like, “Hey, no problem, guys—big misunderstanding.”

That’s awesome. And she has a podcast on Spotify now, right?

Yeah, that’ll be interesting. Definitely a power couple, right? And that’s what’s funny about asking this question. I think out of the last 10 episodes I’ve done, probably three of the guests have said Barack Obama. They said he’s made a big impact on their life. And that’s why I ask these questions—because you never know.

Some people pick family members, some say Jesus, or whoever it is they believe in. I love that because it gives me a sense of who they are, what they value. I enjoy that. I don’t know, to me, it’s kind of like, if you could have that one fun day and sit down with three people at a dinner table—who would it be? It just brings people back to good memories.

Hey man, this was awesome. I’m so glad you made time to be on the podcast. If anyone wants to get in touch with you or learn more about your agency, where can they reach you?

That’s awesome. Amine, you’re a gentleman and a scholar, man. Thanks so much for getting on the podcast today. I’m looking forward to the big things, any future stuff that comes out, and search your name. I’m just going to wait for your next e-book so I don’t have to research everything—it’ll be a lot easier that way.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Next week, we’ll be back with another interesting conversation. Stay tuned to Shane Barker’s Marketing Growth Podcast.