Mastering The Work-Family Balance: Insights from a Social Media Marketer's Journey

Happy New Year, Sarah.

Happy New Year, Mike.

Yeah, thanks for doing this.

No problem.

Yeah, how are you feeling? Fresh.

I've just swum in the sea, so—

Ah, that's interesting. It wasn't cold?

It was 10 degrees, so it felt warm. Felt pretty warm.

Yeah, is that something you do? Like once a year? Is it like once a week thing?

Well, I, for my birthday in November, I had a cold water dip pool. So I've now got one in my garden.

You have a pool in your garden?

A little inflatable one, you know, that now everyone is selling via Facebook ads.

Yeah.

Because you can dropship them from China apparently. So, so yeah. So I've been doing it about 2 to 3 times a week since end of November.

That's quite challenging.

It's— No, I quite— I like it. I think it would be more challenging maybe if my life wasn't as challenging, but with having a young baby and a toddler and trying to work, I— The most challenging thing I find is, is just switching from mum to work mode. And that's the quickest way I can do it. If I've had a morning of, you know, been up half the night, then a morning with my toddler before he goes to nursery, it's all manic. And now suddenly I have to be in work mode, delivering a training course or talking to a client. And yeah, just within a few minutes I can just take a dip in the pool and boom, it just clears everything away and it's a great reset.

So fully agree. I do the same. 7 AM, cold shower, 5 minutes, jump to work.

5 minutes is good.

Well, I lie. I mean, it's 30 seconds. It's 5 minutes, the whole process. Get to the shower, it's 30 seconds. But it does put you in the mode. Yeah, right. So give us the elevator pitch. Who's Sarah?

Uh, Sarah is— so I'm That Social Media Girl. So I mentor and train businesses on how to make money, uh, and generate leads from social media advertising.

And just social media?

Yeah, just social media mainly. Even more specifically, Meta and LinkedIn ads. So the past few years I've specialized on just those two platforms.

Okay, so is that a marketing, but just on social media? Is there a difference if you would say social media and marketing in general?

No, I guess marketing's more the strategy is the same, right? It's marketing strategy, but you're just using the social media channels to activate that strategy. So you're still thinking about your target audience. You're still thinking about the marketing funnel, your main business objectives for marketing, brand awareness, driving consideration, conversion, advocacy. It's just all of that strategy has been activated on, on the social media platforms.

Okay. Is it like B2B, B2C more like when you think about your clients?

Yeah, mix 50/50.

50/50.

Yeah.

Okay. So it's interesting. If I'm business, I fully understand the leads. That's just a top of the funnel. But if I'm B2C, how you find these on LinkedIn? Is it just like how that goes?

Not on LinkedIn. So B2C would mainly be on Meta.

Okay. And Meta, a.k.a. Facebook, right?

Yeah. Facebook and Instagram.

And Instagram.

Combined. Yeah. So that's just one advertising platform now.

How well can you target? Like if you compare all those three platforms, how niche can I go? I know Twitter goes and this is—

X, formerly known as Twitter.

All these rebrands, right? X. Yes, it's X now. But If you buy that, you can actually pick people who own Teslas, which is odd. Like, how do they even know that? Right. But that's probably the wrong question to ask. You just go like, I just want to target people who own Teslas. Like, how deep can you go with, say, LinkedIn?

So with LinkedIn, you can go a lot more granular than Meta because LinkedIn use information that people put in their profiles. So it's a lot more accurate as well. So obviously job title targeting, seniority level, and obviously people are incentivized to keep their profiles up to date as well because it acts a little bit like a CV. So that's why it works so well on LinkedIn. Whereas with Facebook, you can do demographic targeting, but people tend not to put their job title on their Facebook profile. So those type of targeting options on Meta don't really work. The volume's not there, even though you can do it. It's more about interest targeting on Meta, which is a lot broad, a lot more broad. And they are going, they are really pushing businesses now just to target everybody in the UK. So that's zero interest you're layering on for Meta. And they're just going to use, you know, data that they're learning from your website via the pixel or via the conversion API, and they will do the targeting for you.

Okay, so it sounds like a little bit broader. Spread, like you're just going to start with a lot more people likely clicking on the ad. So you need to do more job on, on, on your landing page.

Yeah, you obviously the algorithm is doing the targeting for you. So that will be constantly learning on who's clicking on the ad and then using that to find and then who's converting on your website, who's buying that product. You know, I clicked on Instagram ad, I went on and I bought my cold water plunge pool. And then obviously they can see who I am. They're using my demographics and interest buckets around me and then using that to go and find other people that look like me. Okay.

Do they give— actually, let me rephrase. When you think about KPIs, what do I care most if I'm running ads on Meta? Is it just click-throughs? Is it views? Is it an actual full cycle which ends with the purchase?

It's interesting. I think a lot of people who come, it always shocks me the amount of businesses that come on the training courses that I deliver that they are just happy measuring clicks. And to me, you know, absolutely there's no way I could be reporting on clicks to clients. I'm naturally a direct response marketer. So it's all about driving sales and leads is more where my background is versus brand. So yeah, it would be the full, the full purchase process. So how much you spent, how many products you sold and how much revenue you've driven and what is the ROAS on that.

I think the clicks comes from maybe PPC campaigns and that leads actually to a very interesting question. I have been said more than once that the marketing doesn't work by people who try just like PPC or some random things. And my answer always, you just don't know what you're doing.

Yeah.

What's your take on it? How, like, if you get that said?

I think in this day and age where we're in a digital world and everything's data-driven and we are measuring things, then I don't think you can really say that. I think maybe people aren't aware, you know, these things have to be set up. You have to have a strong measurement foundation in place. You need the pixel on your website. You need Google Analytics. You need all of this tracking set up. So you can actually measure the full journey because even with Google Ads, right, you shouldn't just be measuring clicks. If you've got the pixel set up, you can measure a sale after that. So I don't know, maybe they're not aware of those measurement solutions that you can be using. And I understand it more from a brand point of view, which is, I guess, more traditional marketing. But obviously brand marketing is still really important on social media and digital. So when we think of marketing, we can split it up into two types of marketing. We've got brand marketing and then we've got activation or direct response. So activation, direct response is getting an action right now. So a sale from a click immediately or a lead from a click immediately. Whereas brand is all about being memorable. So we're not trying to drive an instant sale from an ad. It's not saying buy now. It's a video that is giving people a warm fuzzy feeling inside. You know, it's content that is entertaining people, inspiring people. So further on down the line in months, years to come, I go, okay, I want a kitchen. Oh, I'm gonna go with Howdens. And that they're the front of mind for me because I've been seeing their ads for years. I like what they do. And it's just, you know, that there's front and top of mind. So there's two different types of marketing. And brand marketing is definitely a lot harder to measure because it could be you're getting that sale years down the line. I think a really, a little story which I always like to share is there's two ad execs that got into a car and one ad exec said to the other, "Oh, I bought this car because of an ad I saw." And the second ad exec said, "Oh, how is that possible? 'Cause Aston Martin haven't done any advertising campaigns in years." and he said, oh yeah, I saw the ad when I was 13. So he saw that Aston Martin ad when he was 13. He remembered it and he said, I'm going to buy an Aston Martin one day. Years later, he bought the Aston Martin. That obviously can't be linked back to that ad that he saw many years ago.

Okay, I see. If you think about those 3 platforms you own, which are— is there a difference in which I'm using What strategy? So would you say that, you know, just brand awareness is better on social campaigns, and if you want to drive the leads, it's actually better on LinkedIn, or are they equally the same? It just depends on how well you run those campaigns?

Yeah, equally the same. A lot of businesses, depending on the size of the business, will depend on where they— where their priorities are. Small businesses, obviously, generally focus on conversion and leads straight away in sales because they don't have the money to invest in brand marketing when there's no immediate returns. But absolutely, you know, the recommended budget on LinkedIn, the split is 50% on brand and 50% on activation. So if you're looking for an always-on LinkedIn strategy, then thinking about, okay, spending 50% of my budget doing always-on brand where you're reaching 70% of your audience 7 times a month, right? And that's going to be high-impact brand awareness. So you're staying front and top of mind. And then 50% of your budget on activation, where you're driving leads, whether they be marketing qualified leads or sales qualified leads.

And it's just those three.

What about this, you know, you got Pinterest, Twitter, they just, they just don't, don't work as well as LinkedIn and Meta. And that's where I just come back to specializing in those platforms because They just don't drive the volume of sales that the other, that Meta and LinkedIn do. It's just the audience isn't there. Pinterest is a bit better in the US, but in the UK there's just not the volume of people on it every day to be driving that amount of sales. And I've tried it with multiple B2C companies and it just doesn't touch the, doesn't compare to Meta at all.

Okay, so this might be an odd one. Did you ever put an attention to Google+?

I loved Google+. The first training course I wrote and delivered was on Google+.

Why did you love it? I don't even remember, honestly. I didn't use it and it just disappeared.

Yeah, I loved it because you could instantly— I like instant results, right? That's why I like activation marketing. You put an ad live, you get a click and you can sell something and you can see that you've sold something. With Google+, you'd post on Google+ and it would show up within Google search because it was linked. So I love that instant visibility that it gave to social media content, which is pretty cool.

Okay. Do you know why they disappeared? It just never hit the numbers? Never?

It didn't. No. I think the main issue was they forced people to sign up for it. And because you automatically had a Google profile, you know, when you've got your Google login. And I think when you're forced into having a social platform, people rebel. Yeah, they don't like to be forced into—

it's just got shelved, isn't it? Okay, so we've got 3 platforms. If we have a budget, we want to run things on it. It's just you concentrate on those 3, think about your campaigns, you run it, you think about your numbers, and it's not just the clicks, right?

It's not just the clicks. You can do better than clicks.

Exactly. All right, so you got 2 boys, isn't it?

Yes.

How do you manage the work? And actually being a mom for two young boys?

It's challenging, but I mean, I work for myself, so, and I'm fully remote. I've got a great partner who's also fully remote and I've got family close by. So that's how I do it.

Was that strategic? Like remote, buying a house close to family, or is it just almost like necessity, and those decisions came after you, you know, already were in that challenging situation.

I always knew that I wanted to work for myself at one point, um, so that happened before the kids and before I was near my family. But yeah, the moving back toward family was strategic, knowing that we're going to have kids and that I've just heard, heard from people that it really helps if you have the support.

Yeah, we made mistake to I do that. It's a lot more harder. Yeah, it is much better. So when it comes to remote, because you work for yourself, if you would need to go to office, do you think that would change dynamics about how you think, you know, about family, or is it just more like it comes first and then I'm just going to do?

Absolutely. I think right now, I mean, my little list is 6 months, so It wouldn't work if I had to go to the office because I like to need to be in the house with him, right? So I can work upstairs while he's in the house downstairs. Um, but it would just be a lot more challenging to have to get up and leave the house. And, and that time, that commute time, you know, that's all working time for me. So being a mum, oh my gosh, my, my efficiency of my work has just gone through the roof compared to what it used to. I know it's really cliché, but it really does. You know what you'd sit in the office I would spend a whole day doing, work overtime. I'm literally condensing down into a couple of hours a day just because I know it has to be done. And it's also making me prioritise as well, which I maybe wasn't my strength before. I would just try and get everything done all the time and work on the weekends, work in the evenings. But now I love just looking at, you know, what I need to do and going, this physically can't be done, so let's prioritise what is the most important. And you realise that there's so much stuff you waste your time on that you just don't need to do.

Okay. So if people want to get in touch with you, Sarah, and just know more about what you do, how they can do that?

On LinkedIn, probably. I don't really have a website because I've never needed one, which is, I never needed to market myself. Um, it's all mainly done on recommendation, word of mouth, which I think is the best way within the marketing industry.

That's interesting because you have all the knowledge. Of how to do B2C, but you don't really need to do it for yourself because you just get clients coming after clients. So do you have— are you in a situation where you actually need to decline and just lower your, you know, client list because of full-time mom?

Yeah, absolutely. So before I had my first, I had to cull. That's probably not a nice word to use, but it's just reality, isn't it? Yeah, you just had to prioritize what clients to work with. And yeah.

How do you choose clients? Like, how do you prioritize? Is it just best to work with, I know them, I know their products, I, you know, gave them results before?

Yeah, it's a mix of all of it. Knowing that you, knowing that what you do works really well. They've got a great product or service that works really well on social media. So that's quite a big thing. Because some products and services are just a bit boring, right? And they're harder to sell, they take more work. And when you're doing social media marketing, you're competing against videos from influencers, things that are going viral, things people's friends are posting. So the clients that I have, they, they have products where they will stop people scrolling in the newsfeed because they catch people's attention. And that's just why they, they naturally lend themselves to social media.

Okay, so touching on different medias, that, that's interesting one. So because Instagram is, is video, when you buy an ad, is it just an image or can you actually— do you buy an ad which is a video?

Yeah, so there's different ad types.

Do they have a different conversions, like, like, like numbers-wise? Would you suggest that you always want to make a video, or is it, you know, image, or is it just fine like a text Yeah, it's interesting because everyone obviously assumes video now, which just rules. Yeah.

But with Meta, we still see a lot that single image works really well to convert. So that's Facebook and Instagram. So absolutely, I would never put a campaign live with just a video in. So, you know, at the very least, you need one video and one image within your campaign. And video does work to convert, but so does single image. So, and some people won't watch videos, some people aren't video people and some people are, and Meta will know who is who. So by having an image in your campaign as well, then, you know, it means that you've got opportunity to give Meta to show that image to people who aren't video people.

Do you make them? Do you make the videos and the images, or do you get that from like the businesses and you just run the campaigns?

A mix. So now more so I get the videos from the businesses or I work with influencers. Who create them. So I've kind of started— I did that more before, but I prioritized, and that takes a lot of time to create that media, and I don't need to do that. Okay. So I work with people who do.

Is there logic when you do videos? Like, sometimes, you know, I see a video in the feed and it's just screaming an ad and it's just almost like too much of it. So you just go like, that's just annoying. Like, I'm not even going to engage with this. And then you have an ad done in such a way that you don't really think of it as an ad. You think that's an actual, you know, real image a person shared. So it's very like you just naturally want to engage with it. Is there like science to it?

Yeah, absolutely. With if you're doing conversion campaigns, if you're trying to drive instant sales, low production value content actually often works a lot better. And that's a trend that is still seeing time and time again, B2C as well as B2B, which is quite interesting from a B2B perspective because a lot of B2B companies will spend a lot of time and money creating very high production value polished content. But people, that doesn't resonate with people as much. They scroll past it because it looks like an ad. So the ads that I've seen work the best are just shot on an iPhone, Somebody's customer at home has just filmed, you know, a hot chocolate bomb going in milk, and that's the best thing to then sell that product. So working with your customers to create that content, um, or for example, in the construction industry, from a B2B perspective, thinking about who is using your product, uh, on site. So builders, working with builders who are creating content themselves, they're creating TikToks, they're doing it all day. Because they want something else to do other than build and they have created amazing content. And that's just one example of finding them and getting the content from them.

Is there an industry which you would say would not work? Or is it just applicable to all?

I think it's applicable to all because at the end of the day, we're all people, right? We're people scrolling LinkedIn. Just because you're trying to target businesses, you're targeting the people in that business. And obviously you probably heard it, but there's that cheesy quote that there is no B2B. B2C anymore. It's all P2P, person to person. So we're talking to people and on social media, that's where people spend their time and scrolling. So I think for some businesses, it's harder to think of how that type of content will work for them. But I think it would always work. It's just thinking outside the box.

So there's a lot of knowledge and a lot of skill to have. And I imagine someone you know, have a dream to make pillows at home, have an Etsy shop, they likely will not have enough knowledge to run these campaigns by themselves. Which is, you know, how do you keep up to date? Because, you know, running, having kids, then running your own business, and then actually keeping up to date with what's going on in your industry to actually, you know, run the campaigns well and all whatnot. Do you have like a favorite blogs, favorite podcasts?

Like, yeah, I mean, depends on what you'll want to keep up to date with, but there's Smart Marketeer. They have a great podcast. They create great content. There's John Loomer from a technical perspective on Meta. You know, I pay to be part of his groups. They all have private Facebook groups that you can pay to be part of so that I'm seeing updates. As soon as they happen. Um, and, and you can discuss those with other marketeers as well. So I think being part of private groups where you can have that conversation with other marketeers, because then even, you know, as I'm work— moving away from management myself, yeah, I still manage some client campaigns but not the volume that I used to because I'm moving towards training and mentoring. But it's still really important that I understand what works practically from a campaign perspective. Okay. So you have to have that conversation, I think, with with people who were still activating campaigns.

Do you have a private Facebook group?

I don't. Oh, I do actually. Yeah, but it's a free one.

It's a free one.

Yeah.

People come and join it. Do you share the content over there?

No, it's a bit dead. Since I had kids, unfortunately, that's gone on the back burner. Yeah. But there's, you know, projects that are just— they're there waiting. Maybe 1 year, 2 years, then that'll be my next thing to go back to those. Online training courses.

So you're doing mentoring and training courses and it's just worth them out, so you're not really need to, you know, push, push your name out there. But if someone would, what would be your recommendation? You know, think of me, I want to be known, you know, I want to be, I don't know, Elon Musk. I don't know why everyone using Elon Musk, by the way. I use it, but you know, you want to become a public figure, how can you leverage Uh, you know, like personal brand building and social media and just combine everything to just sort of push yourself out, not your product, not your business, but just yourself.

So I think just getting yourself in front of people, um, because I've been in the training industry for quite a while now, and that's historically, you know, I've been training now for probably over 7 years. And I'm seeing at least— talking to at least 40 businesses a month, the very least, that I'm— I've got a whole day with them and I'm teaching them stuff. So when I was a facilitator for Google, again, there were workshops of even more people. And then when you're talking at events, that's more people again. So if you're meeting that many people face to face, then you are just getting out there. And as long as you're posting about that on LinkedIn and Instagram and you're sharing that kind of stuff, I think it's— you naturally, you just— you're positioned as an authority. So I've never really strategically done anything other than just share what I do and educate.

Just going out there, running events, just going on a stage, speaking, showing your knowledge, and then just everything sort of comes after that. What about like when the COVID happened?

COVID?

Yeah.

So I was very lucky that, uh, business was booming for me actually during COVID So you did the work before? Well, lots of businesses— I could, I could— the training courses went online instead of face-to-face. So the, the training side, you know, was still going strong. It was just virtual training courses. And then a lot of businesses were upping their spend during COVID So from a social media campaign perspective, there was businesses looking to increase their spend and do more.

Is face-to-face the same as online? If you would choose, or let's say someone wants to do that, you know, they want to share what they know because, you know, they want to put themselves out there, but some issues with public speaking and, you know, maybe they feel better doing online because they don't see the people and they look at themselves and they just talk. But conversion-wise or just, just, you know, lead generation-wise, which one is better, live, online, or doesn't matter?

I don't think it matters. I think maybe the type of the event. So since COVID all my training has been virtual. It's live online and it's a whole day you're spending with these people. And I haven't, you know, they're still more than, they're still very interested on working. With me after that.

So do you find people engage maybe more with online because it's just easier? Or like if you run live, logistically speaking for yourself, live is, I would imagine, just easier online.

Yeah.

Because you don't need to go, you don't need the venue. But for people, like, do you run any survey maybe or just opinion? Like what's easier for people to attend? Is it live or is it online? And what effectively they choose. I'm just thinking from my own perspective because, yeah, I tend to not go to lives, especially if it's free, you know. Like, you get a marketing email, you go like, that's a nice one, and you just click sign in. But if you don't pay, you just like, you never go. Yeah, like sometimes, but the timing needs to be right. But I tend to do a lot less. If you pay, then somehow you just make time. But if it's physical, I feel like I can press skin, as in I can go in and then just put myself, you know, meet people and just network. It just becomes maybe more valuable. That's just me personally. But from your perspective, people you work with?

I think there's a difference probably between events and training courses.

Okay.

Right. So events, there's more networking opportunities. So absolutely. If it was an event, then face-to-face would be better because a virtual event, you're not going to be mingling. I mean, they try and do like breakout sessions and stuff, right? But it just doesn't really work as well.

Yeah. People just often with the cams off and they're just silent and just wait until someone will start talking in that breakout session. It's quite often quite awkward, to be honest.

Very. And you can't have a conversation, can you, the same way?

Yeah.

So yeah, free events, definitely face-to-face. Face-to-face, and I think people appreciate that more. With a training course that people have paid to go on, you know, they've paid to go on this training course and you are delivering the content to them, then that's a little bit different, I think.

If someone would challenge you on training course and say, I think face-to-face is so much better, what would be your answer?

I think it just depends on, you know, everyone has different learning styles. Some people like being on their own and not having the distraction of being in a room with people and worrying about how they're sitting. You know, what they look like and all of that, which for some people is a thing that may be a bit more socially awkward. You know, if you're at home on your laptop or your computer, you're in your zone. You can be doing stuff at the same time, like in platform or Googling stuff, and that's just— people prefer to work like that. I think definitely for businesses. So when I go in-house to businesses, then it can help sometimes people being in their silos. Because they focus more. Whereas if you're delivering a training course face-to-face and you've got a room full of 20 people, then they can distract each other a lot more. But obviously, if it's more of a brainstorming workshop, then that obviously needs to be— is going to work better face-to-face. So it just depends on the type of training.

So when you build your courses, what's your process? How you think, you know, let's say, what courses do you have? Like, I want to subscribe tomorrow.

So it's a full day. The two courses at the moment I'm running, which are my core courses, a full day on Meta advertising and a full day on LinkedIn advertising.

And when we say full day, that's from like 9 to 5?

Yeah, 9:30 till 4:30.

There's a lunch bit in the middle?

Our lunch, yeah.

So it's like 5 hours non-stop?

Yeah.

Knowledge, and you just, just literally pure knowledge slides and you're talking all the time?

Slides and then platform demoing, and there'll be questions. So, you know, people can comment whether they unmute themselves or whether they're just commenting in the chat, asking questions, which I'll answer. And then we'll often go around and people will share back. So I'll say, look, where are you in your measurement journey? And everyone will feed back. Okay, well, we haven't got the pixel set up yet. We need to do this and this. So because people can learn from each other as well.

How do you structure these? Is this just pure, like, experience and just iterating on those, or do you use any, like, framework?

I guess originally a framework, yeah, it's just going through the campaign process and also the marketing funnel. And these are these thinking of what is necessary for somebody to, to activate and to run their own campaign, then breaking that down into modules and then deciding on how in-depth you need to go in each module. I do find one day quite challenging. You could easily do a week on Meta alone, you know, if you were to go really in-depth. So to get everything into one day is quite hard.

It's challenging, isn't it? There's a lot of content. Why would, like, why not two days? Why not like a week, as you say? Never tried to do that?

It's not always up to me. It's for the companies as well. I run the training courses from, but people like to get started with the one day, I guess, you know, they haven't got the time. It's always a time. It's hard to get people out of the office for a day. Never mind a week. Okay.

So all your background is a lot of marketing, a lot of social, isn't it? And it's been like, like 10 years or so? 10 plus?

Yep. 10 plus years.

Do you see yourself staying in that? And the question is, do you think there will be a change around social media in general? You know, because I think when we had Facebook, no one thought there's going to be a Twitter. And then Twitter appeared, you know, LinkedIn was always around, but then, you know, Pinterest appeared as well. And it seems that the market is just finding ways to introduce different ways of, you know, doing social media to think there's something new on the horizon.

Obviously there's TikTok.

Here you go.

Just the next big thing.

Forgot about TikTok. It's a huge thing now, isn't it?

Yeah. It's hard, but obviously there's, you know, Facebook now is turning into a premium product in some countries. So people will be paying to not have ads delivered to them. Yeah. On a Facebook profile. So there's lots of change coming. I don't know how many people are going to sign up for that.

But isn't Twitter— I'm sorry, X doing the same thing? Like you'll need to pay like a $1 premium. Yeah, yeah.

And lots of companies have dropped from that because Twitter wasn't a strong enough platform in the first place. But I think what I've noticed is that social media platforms do come and they go, and there's always the next big thing. But in my experience so far, I hate to say it, Meta just continues and has always ruled to date because Meta then bought out Instagram, for example. Um, when Snapchat came out, and then they brought out Instagram Stories and then Reels. Um, so they just adapt. And of course now Meta's got Threads, which is like Twitter. So I don't know whether they'll, they'll keep ruling, but so far they've done a pretty good job. But when a new platform comes out, they just somehow take what people love about that and they add it to their, to the offering.

Yeah, just competing well.

The reach they have globally is insane compared to the other platforms. They by far have the biggest reach. If you're looking at Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp then as well, and Messenger. So, from a reach perspective and how many people you can reach, Meta is just, that's just why they do rule when you look at the figures and the numbers. And people say like, "No one uses Facebook anymore," but they do. They still have a lot of active users. They're just more silent. And Again, just the volume of sales that you can drive is just, I think it just proves that people are still on that platform and they're happy to buy.

Is there a number you'd potentially give to your clients or just advertisement number which people could expect if they never did ads and you go like, did you ever do ads? No, we didn't do. What is your product? That's what we do. And you go like, I'm quite sure I can triple that or 4 times, like, Is there like a, you know, almost like an average success rate where you go, you know, if you have leads 5 through your different channels, I know I can make 15.

Yeah, I think it depends on, it depends on lots of things, but I could pretty much know from looking, you know, at a company and their product or service, whether it's going to work straight away or not. And also their internal processes and culture and how much content there is there that's going to be created to feed into the platforms. But not long ago I worked with a local business and they never did any Facebook advertising. And I think within the first year we made half a million pounds on Facebook and that was from zero online advertising.

So they had no presence. Whatsoever about themselves online, as in social presence?

They had, they had some organic presence, so they were just posting to their profiles for free, but they weren't doing actual advertising where you're going and you're setting up a campaign with a target audience and you're paying.

Do you actually need to have the presence? Like, say I'm a business. Oh, let's go back to that private, you know, brand build out. I'm a person. I'm not on Facebook. Like, do I need to be on Facebook to run ads, or can I just drive Facebook attention or attention from Facebook to my LinkedIn cross-platform?

You do need a Facebook page.

You need a new Facebook page to run an ad.

So the ad has to be attached to the page. How active that page has to be, you know, you don't need a massive following. Some people will click through and look at the page, so they will check it out. But as long as, you know, you haven't— you've posted in the last week, So some content needs to be going on there. So it looks up to date. But yeah, it's not necessary that you have a very, very active page with hundreds of thousands of followers.

Does it have an influence in the results to some extent?

Not if you've got a good product. No, not if you're running conversion campaigns, because it's— you're targeting people who are more likely to click through to the website, that clicks through to the page. And actually, it'll do an amazing job, your organic presence, just by running the ad campaigns, your followers will naturally grow.

Okay, so it does sound like you like Facebook or Meta. Sorry, all names, all names.

I like it because it, it's, it makes my life easy. They make my life easy because it works.

Okay, let's go to LinkedIn, which I feel like I do best on LinkedIn, and I'm really not sure. I think maybe because it's B2B. Yeah, it just sort of started and I just stuck with it. So it has these different things like, uh, you can become a, a top voice you know, you can switch your account to be like creator, own some hashtags, you know, put some content out and theoretically, you know, position yourself like an influencer. So if that's your end goal, would you still say Meta is better?

No, not from a B2B perspective. From a professional perspective, LinkedIn would definitely rule.

Yep, because it's just a lot more businesses over there, isn't it?

Yeah, and it just works differently. So you have to befriend people on Facebook, and that would be your profile, which would be too personal. So you'd have to be a page as an influencer, and you can't, you can't network with people in the same way on Facebook.

Like LinkedIn?

Yeah, so absolutely, it would be LinkedIn.

So it is B2B LinkedIn, B2C Facebook?

Yeah, B2B still works on Facebook from a business perspective if you're not an influencer, um, and it works better for smaller B2B companies who don't have the budget for LinkedIn advertising. 'Cause the LinkedIn advertising, LinkedIn are now recommending £150 a day minimum ad spend. £150 a day minimum ad spend for their advertising campaign.

That's like £4,500 a month.

Yeah, that's their recommendation. I mean, it works for less than that. I recommend around £40 a day. So if £40 a day still feels way too expensive, then LinkedIn's probably, the advertising platform is probably not gonna be right for you as a business. Facebook is a lot cheaper.

So, so this, that means there's, um, almost like a traditional filtering happening at LinkedIn level where they go, if you're just kicking off and you're like one person, you know, trying to create your Etsy or Shopify shop, it's probably not going to be LinkedIn unless you want to pay for it, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely.

Would you advise to do that, by the way? Like, um, I get a lot of these, um, like a dropshipping Shopify people just coming in, they look at the trends, they go, here's the spring, we know the vitamin C serum will be popular, that's something which comes up every year, so we'll avoid the stock, so we will just find a company which dropships and which is gonna run ads. And then they just, that's pretty much what they do, just put an ad, put it on LinkedIn, put it on Instagram, put it on TikTok, push it and just drive it to, you know, Shopify site and sort of, you know, buy it. If that's my plan and I'm just like alone, what's my spend? You know, let's say £50 a day. What would you recommend? Go Instagram? Still Meta?

Yeah, absolutely Meta, because you've always got to go back to if you're B2B or B2C generally, and if you're selling a product that's B2C, Meta is always going to be better.

Okay. What about TikToks?

So, so, or TikTok. Yeah, Meta or TikTok.

I feel like TikTok, and it just could be me, but I feel like people just scroll, scroll, scroll, but they never actually click into it. Do you know TikTok numbers?

Yeah, it works to sell for the younger generations.

Okay.

Absolutely. It's just more content hungry. It's harder. It takes more, like TikTok recommends, you know, that you're putting fresh videos live every week for your ad campaign, which is a lot.

Every week?

Yeah. So that's like maybe 5 to 10 new videos a week. So unless you work with influencers who are creating that content, you know, you need an influencer strategy to be on TikTok. You need content creators feeding you content or you need to be creating that yourself weekly.

So there's a step in between you running an ad where you actually either become an influencer by producing a lot of content or you team up. Yeah, with the influencer which already has that. Yeah, that sounds expensive. That, that sounds like by itself more expensive than just buying ads on Meta, potentially.

But again, depending on the audience, if you're selling a beauty product, TikTok is maybe the, the problem— primary platform for you. Um, so it's about, you know, you, you'd run test campaigns on each and you'd see where the volume comes from.

So you do some A/B testing if you have some cash. You touched on demographics, saying, you know, it's likely a younger generation on TikTok, which is most likely going to drive the sales. So come back on that. If, let's say, I have my persona and I do know the age I want to target, is there a difference where you would go, like 40-year professionals?

What do you mean? Sorry.

Like where, where I would run my ads. Do I put it like—

Oh, if 40+ professionals.

Yeah.

And so 40+ professionals, again, if that's B2B, you're probably going to want to go on LinkedIn.

Say B2C.

For B2C, then absolutely Meta.

Absolutely Meta.

Yeah.

And if it's 20 years?

Then you'd definitely be considering Meta and TikTok.

Okay. So that, so that means the younger you go, the more TikTok-ish you lean, isn't it? What about Instagram? Because for me, they— I want to say the same, but I'm not, you know, I'm not a heavy user, so it's hard to judge. But I do feel like Instagram is a young person's game as well.

Yeah, it is. And that's where Instagram would compete with TikTok. But Instagram is Meta, remember? So every time we say Meta, the actual ad platform now is combined. So Instagram is just a placement. So Meta would go, okay, let's push your ads out on Facebook and Instagram at the same time. And they will just auto-optimize to where it's getting the most sales or leads.

Okay. So you run through Meta and you run on Instagram. Can you run ads on WhatsApp? I've seen, I've seen some business automating this outreach and I, you know, I sort of needed to go to my profile and actually block, but I would just get like random phone numbers going like, hey, We are business, you know, here's our ad. That's not through Meta.

No, that's just a, that's a different, it's a bit like automated LinkedIn mails. It's slightly different.

There you go. Yeah, it's probably some tools online spamming everybody. Okay, so let me touch on some mentoring, Sarah. So, um, you, you run the courses, right? Uh, which means I can buy into like a day and I get your content. And I did a couple of times and, you know, you get this huge injection of knowledge, but you still need to sort of go out and try. And, you know, often while you start trying, you go, I have a question, I have another question, right? And then having this almost like a, you know, a mentoring hour or a package of mentoring hours is, is it something you do? Just, just.

Yeah. And I find that works really well because absolutely one day course is not enough. And people don't know what they don't know. So they may not have questions on the course, but as soon as they go to their computer, then it's like, oh my gosh, now I've actually got to run this campaign, you know? And it can be scary for some marketeers if there's a lot of budgets involved and lots of pressure. So yeah, you just need someone to sense check that what you're doing is okay and right. So whether that be an hour a week for 6 weeks, or you start off with an hour a week and then it gets a little bit longer between the sessions. Just for you while you're running your first campaigns. Okay.

Are you able to disclose what your, like, mentoring hourly rate, or that's too sensitive, or is it more based on every single person differently?

I think, yeah, it's, it's based on every single person differently, but it'd be, it would be minimum €150 an hour.

Yeah, just to jump on a call with Sarah. Yeah, just get through the questions.

Yeah.

Do you get the questions, uh, Often the same? Like, are there patterns to what people really care about? Or is it just very case by case?

Um, you get similar questions on, on the courses. Yeah. Um, you know, things like what works better, video or image? How much budget should I be using? Um, how do you plan budgets? How big should my target audience be? Those are probably the main ones. And then as we're going through campaign setup, it'll be, you know, should I put all placements on or should I choose placements manually? It's like little things like that.

Yeah, which can be covered. So do you have yourself a mentor?

I don't know, but I need one.

You need one?

Yeah.

Where would you, how would you go and source one? Because for me, I feel like mentoring is so highly overlooked by people. So how much impact you can have anything, you know, you're running a business, you want to advance your career, uh, I don't know, you want to improve your relationship, literally goes to everything. Just, just looking at someone and going like, you know, you are in a place where I would like to be, let me know how you do that. And I seek mentors all the time, but what's your process of, of like, you know, finding a mentor?

So it used to be, you know, when I worked for companies, just looking who was in the leadership role, but I thought, you know, I want to be, be that in that position. But now I'm less in-house, I work for myself. I think it'll just be looking at online, to be honest, is where I'd start looking at events and speakers.

LinkedIn and speakers?

Yeah.

LinkedIn?

Yeah.

Yeah. Just, uh, going by the hashtag?

Um, yeah, keyword searching, not hashtags. I would just type in.

So let's see hashtags. Let's say you find a person, hey, what's the approach?

Hey, so it would be a person like, for example, I'm thinking of someone now who I'd like to be my mentor. Okay, well, you know, I already follow her on Instagram actually, so she would actually be more Instagram than LinkedIn, this particular person. And I get her emails in my inbox and I've signed up for free trading courses from them and free webinars. So it's content, you know, I've been nurtured by that content. For a number of years now.

Okay. And you just basically go, I think you know what I want to know.

Yeah, I think you can take me to the next level.

Yep.

But it's all through webinars, podcasts, and they've just shared— she shares knowledge and her company share knowledge. So I know that, you know, that's— I know they know their shit, basically.

So you said she twice. So you have a name in mind?

Yeah, just for an example I'm thinking of so I could give a more concrete answer.

Yeah, it's okay. So that would lead to a question. A person you know, which I should interview next. Give me like a concrete name.

Michelle Carville.

Michelle Carville.

Michelle Carville.

Who is she?

She's been a mentor of mine. I used to work with her. and she's an excellent marketeer and trainer. She got me into the social media space. She was an old manager of mine, so she really inspired me. She's a fantastic manager, um, and I, I wouldn't be where I was now without her, actually. And so I owe her a lot, and she's also a great friend. She's extremely passionate about what she does, and she's really big into sustainability at the moment and sustainability marketing. She's got her own podcast, Can Marketing Save the Planet? Um, she's— I don't know how many times published author she is. 8 times published author.

An 8 times published author?

That is not accurate, but there's lots of books. It's near there.

It's like 8 books. That's a lot of content.

It is. She's a content creator. She just creates content.

So it's like an omnipresent situation where you have a podcast, then you have your courses. You just take all of that, put it in the books.

It's like She loves to educate. And so, yeah, and she's, she has a lot to say. Okay.

I'll see if I can get her.

Yeah.

All right. So we have a new year, right? It's January 1st.

Yeah.

What are the big goals for the year?

More cold water dipping.

Of course.

Um, get stronger physically.

Get stronger? Like a gym?

Physically. Yeah. You know, weight building.

Weightlifting.

Yeah.

Where is that coming from? Just fitter body or you just—

Yeah, because it's important. I guess I'm a woman now, a lady of a certain age. It becomes more important as you get older. And I've been, you know, I've just had a baby. So you feel a bit out of action. So just to get back into that because it's really important and have more fun. I think.

Define fun.

Just try and have fun in the moment and relax a bit more, worry less, be more present and not thinking about what's next. You know, I think as a, as a mum and still working and a business owner, you have, there's the danger of getting sucked into this, I have to be productive every single second of the day. And you can't just sit there, you're like, what can I do next? What can I do right now? How can I fill this minute? Um, but it just means that you're on this treadmill and you're not stopping. So just, just relaxing and being like, you know what, I'm just going to try to be present here and enjoy this moment rather than thinking what to do next.

Just mindfulness.

Yeah. Mindfulness.

Do you have any practices in mind? Like meditation?

Yeah. So I'm big into yoga. Um, so I do hot yoga weekly. I used to do, um, I'm a, um, a yoga teacher, but I haven't practiced teaching for a while. Um, and I'll get into hopefully do that more like 3 times a week once Baba's a bit older again and I can get out the house more. So I think naturally, as soon as my yoga practice picks up, the mindfulness just happens more naturally. But I think it's when it drops, then, uh, it, uh, your mind just gets busier.

So you got the dipping, you got the weightlifting, you got the mindfulness. That's all personal. It's just getting you, you know, Sarah version 1 to Sarah version 2.

Yeah. Which will automatically feed into me in the professional world.

It starts with you basically.

Yeah, absolutely. To, you know, to be the A-player, you have to be looking after yourself. You know, your mind has to be in that place where you can perform. Your best game every day.

I like that. Yeah, you can start with the prioritizing just work, just business, run yourself out, burn out. Yeah, just feel disengaged or just have no energy in general and then go like, why things are not happening for me?

Yeah, I think the foundations have to be there. Um, you know, I used to be— do the whole like 5 AM club. I used to be keto.

Oh my God, I did 5 AM club. Oh my God, that's a, that's a narrow conversation just by that. It's so Yeah.

But, um, you, uh, you know, you've got kids as well, right? You just can't keep up the things, uh, these things, especially when they're little and young, you have to let things go. So I think it's a season and it's just accepting that, knowing that maybe getting back to that one day, but there's certain things like cold water dipping that are just more.

It's so simple as well. I mean, I. 5 AM club. Let me zoom on this one. Um, where did you learn that from?

So I wasn't there. I just saw it online by 5 AM club. I don't know if there's an actual real club.

There's a book.

Yeah. So I, okay. All I used to do was get up at 5 AM and work on one thing that I wanted to work on first thing in the day. So whether that would be to write a blog, you know, write some content, um, record a video or whatever. And so yeah, that's what I mean by 5 AM Club.

So there's a book and I don't remember the author, but the idea is the same. It's just basically you waking up 5 AM and you have a process of 20 minutes of quick exercise. You need to get yourself in a sweat state. So maybe, you know, quick running or just, I don't know, some inside jogging or whatnot. And then I think you do the shower and then you do journaling. No, no, you do the exercise, you do the reading, and then you do the journaling. Yeah. And it's just your first hour, and then you just go off with your day. So I bought into that, you know, just big dreams, you know, big goals. And I was like, you know, there's a lot of time between 5 and 9.

Yeah.

So I can do a lot. And I did that for about 9 months, and I developed a heart condition, and I absolutely burned myself out to the point where I was just you know, with heart palpitations in hospital and going like, you know, I just need sleep, basically. It's, you can absolutely go too much. And if you don't think about what you just said, your health and just actually feeling good to perform, that's where you stop and you go like, I need to first feel good and then try to perform.

Yeah, absolutely. That's interesting you said that because my, I noticed certain things happen as well when I was doing 5 AM Club. Of my health deteriorating, even though mentally I loved it and I loved the feeling of it because I was being so productive and it's addictive, right? Because you're on this buzz, but you never come down from it. It's like you're always in fight and flight mode. I found maybe for a year or so in London when I was working at an agency and I was on this, this, this level, but I think I was just constantly fight and flight mode and you're just boom, boom, boom, but you never have time to rest or break and yeah. Eventually crash.

Yeah. Someone did 5 AM and we had very similar conversation and they said, I would take Sundays to catch up on sleep. So they would just sleep until like 11 or 12, you know, just get the body, you know, back into shape. You can do that if you don't have kids, isn't it?

Yeah.

If you got kids, then it's just the choice of wake hours is quite limited.

Yeah. Absolutely. And that, you know, I want to be a good parent too, right? So kids also need, need your time. And I think that's the, that's the biggest challenge for me is, is trying to get that balance.

Yep. I do agree.

They're not going to be little forever.

Exactly. You got like, what, 4 years of, you know, cuddling and all the smoochies and then, and then it starts ending.

And then, yeah, I see this thing always on Instagram saying that once your kids reach 7 or 10, maybe, you know, you won't be their favorite person anymore. They'll have friends and whoever. And it's— I really like that. It kind of hits home that you've only got that certain amount of time that they will look up to you like they do now, and they'll want to come for cuddles and hold your hand.

So, yeah, make sure you're not going to regret those few first 4 years, then yeah, because it's really true. I mean, I got 7 years old and it's, yeah, it's already there. You get more life back though. Like then you can start thinking, you know, maybe more me and bigger goals.

Yeah.

But yeah, if you go back and you go, oh, I should have spent more time and prioritized kids more, it's probably too late, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And everyone says these are the best days of their lives.

So there you go.

They have to be, right?

So we put that in the goals list as well, isn't it? Then we have cold showers, some gym, mindfulness, kids in that picture. Anything, anything more? I mean, that's a big list by itself, by the way.

Yeah, no, I could easily say what I want to achieve professionally, but I know that I'm not going to do that this year. So that's just parked until maybe 2 or 3 years.

Okay.

Is, is will be, you know, scaling what I do. Because I know, I know what I do. I know what I do, I do well. I know I'm good at it.

There's a demand for it as well.

There's a demand for it. So it's just figuring out how I can scale that.

I mean, if you're not really running any marketing on yourself and you're culling client lists, imagine what you could do if you're not culling and plus, you know, you push yourself out through the marketing campaigns. That's a proper business skill, isn't it?

Yeah. Just need a mentor and some help.

Okay.

Help me do that.

That's exciting times. So we'll get you back in what, 2025?

When I'm in business mode.

There you go. Then we talk different, right? All right, cool. Cheers for doing that, Sarah.

No worries.

All right. All good.

Thanks, Mike.