Traci Reuter - Founder of Divine Social

Hey, folks, welcome to another edition of the Small Business Show. How are you, Dave?

I'm good. Shannon, how are you?

I'm good, man. I'm excited for today because I've wanted to have this guest on for quite a while.

Same.

And yeah, we're going to talk. She has a really interesting talent stack because we're going to talk about digital marketing, social channels, which, you know, some really great macro stuff, but also drilling down into how to be effective in today, something you could do today that wouldn't cost you hardly any money at all and could have a big impact on your business. And she also has some E commerce experience on marketplaces with different clients. And I love that because I'm a marketplace guy. So I'm really excited to talk with Tracy Reuter from Divine Social.

Yeah. Listen for the moment where she explains her action. And then there is. There is but one awkward pause in the show. You have three people in this interview that all are very used to talking. I don't want to say we're all very good at it. Tracy's very good at it. Shannon's very good at it. We're all very used to it. And you will hear a moment where there is dead air and Tracy's not quite sure what to do. And it's because she's sort of dumbfounded. Shannon and I here gobsmacked. Gobsmacked is the right. Yeah. Because what she told us to do is something. She's right. That was the problem. Yeah. So it's one of the best actions. You know, we talk about small businessing here as a verb, and boy howdy, is the action that she has has teed up for us a good one. So I, I will leave it at that. She does a much better job of explaining it than I do, so I'll let her have her glory in that moment.

So, yeah, it's going to be great. Make sure you stick around to the end to get that tip and a few other little treats down there that she's done for. For our listeners today.

Yeah, absolutely. And if, you know, to your point, Shannon, if you haven't been listening to the end and you've been miss. Well, listen to this one and then decide to go back and listen maybe to some of the others because I think you might have missed out. You don't want to miss this one.

Yep.

All right. Well, you have anything else or are we ready to go here?

No, man, I'm ready to small business. Let's do it.

I am ready to small business. He is Shannon Jean. I'm Dave Hamilton, and this is episode 303 of the Small Business Show.

Yeah, I'd say it's probably the latter. I think it's the fact that the biggest misconception is that you can slap up a conversion, an ad, and that's going to be the answer to everything that you have. That it's. That that's really all it is. And I think overlooking the rest of it, really, you know, ignoring the customer journey, ignoring that people are at different stages. You know, they're at different stages of awareness. And quite often we see, you know, we see people who run ads and, you know, they're talking to people at one stage and one stage only, and it's. It falls flat. You know, if I've never heard of you and you're talking to me in a, you know, your copy in an ad is talking to me as if I already know you, that I'm ready to make a buying decision. I'm like, what is this? And who are you next? You know, like, I'm not even gonna pay attention. So I think ignoring that, those critical stages and. And I think the other. I guess if I could add to that, I mean, there's a lot to it, but being unwilling. Being unwilling to put your advertising dollars behind the other stages. Because so often I see people who only want to put their money into conversion campaigns, and they're missing out by not. By not having a portion of their. The first two pillars.

Dave, you know, I always talk about. There's so much to figure out with digital marketing on social channels like Facebook and Instagram. Right? It's. It can be overwhelming.

It is overwhelming and not can be. It is.

Everything changes. You know, you have to continually measure what you're doing, update your techniques, because things that, like, work for me a few months ago, sometimes they just stop working. And then, you know, we talk a lot too, about finding trusted sources. It can be a challenge. So I'm really happy. Joining us today on the Small Business show is the founder and CEO of Divine Social. Tracy Reuter has decades of sales and marketing experience, and now she focuses her expertise on helping companies create and focus their strategies for digital marketing success. Tracy, thanks so much for coming on the show today. We're excited to talk with you.

Happy to be here with you gentlemen.

That's cool. Now, we love talking about small business, so before we jump in talking about other businesses, let's talk about yours. You know, looking at your background a bit, you've been in marketing a long time. How did you make that transition to starting your own business and what led you to start Divine Social?

Well, it was definitely not. It wasn't a natural one. I wish I could tell you it was a. It was a natural decision for me to go this route or that I was one of those lifelong entrepreneurs from the age of two, that was not the case at all. I, you know, grew up in a small town in New England, was told to get a good job with good benefits, and I did just that. So I took my route. I got a marketing degree, went into sales, worked my way up the corporate ladder at, AT and T. And thought I was gonna, you know, was living the American dream at that point. But then my husband. My husband got very, very sick at the age of 34. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's on my 29th birthday. And that, yeah, that was not fun. That was not fun information to get, you know, but I. So I was in this weird situation where it was like, I've got to do something. I can't be working 80 hours a week away from home. Even though I was raised in this blue collar home, I did have an uncle that was a serial entrepreneur that I was exposed to and really inadvertently mentored by. And so I kept thinking about him, like, what do we do? Like, what can I do? Can I do something like that? And the long and short of it is I ended up leaving my career so that I could put my husband first. And it took me several years to get my business off the ground. As a matter of fact, I had multiple failed businesses before getting into my groove here with the Divine Social and with this agency. But it was really out of necessity more than anything. And I think today I stay in it out of the freedom and the wonderful things and how I really believe small businesses can change the world. But that was not the impetus. I won't kid you that. That was the reason that I had some grand design to go and change the world. I just needed to survive back then.

But wow, so, so many people start businesses for reasons other than necessity. Usually necessity is the thing that sends an entrepreneur back to the safe route, quote, unquote, safe route of working for someone else. Whereas for you, it was. It was it same exact, you know, thought process, but. But different 180 degrees result. And that I think it, it makes sense to me. Anytime I'm in panic mode, I'm always thinking, all right, what's the next business? What's the next opportunity? Not who can employ me, but not everybody.

Well, I mean, I won't kid you. And during, in some of the hard times, I definitely thought like, am I nuts? Like I had this ridiculously high six figure job. I was a, you know, executive at a Fortune 10 company. But you know, the stress of that job with the stress of my home life was killing me. And then the stress of starting a business eventually almost killed me. But it didn't. So, you know, it was, I guess maybe I'm, I'm, I was stubborn enough or I just, I really believed at some point that that was the only way I was going to figure out how to, how to have a future. Because I just, you know, that I was really, you know, I was only 29 when that happened. And I mean that was, you know, just last week. Not really, I'm kidding, like 20 years. But I mean I was, I was young and I just didn't see how I was going to, I didn't see how I was going to make a good future for myself and balance what was going on in my home life. So it seemed like the only option, to be perfectly honest.

But kudos to you. Yeah. I don't think you can put too fine a point on it how, you know, a crushing, you know, piece of information, health related like that, that could just stop a lot of people in their tracks. And then you used it as a foundation to create what we call the charmed life of a small business owner. And having that flexibility. We don't think there's much freedom as small business owners, but there's a lot of flexibility. And so, you know, in fact, we.

Think we traded our freedom for flexibility a long time ago.

But that's, but being able to connect with your family and spend more time and take care of your loved ones. I mean, you know, my kids grew up at my business, you know, one of them or another, and run around all day when they're little kids and working for us and that kind of thing. So that, that's just a really powerful message of the possibilities of going out on your own. I think that's fantastic.

Yeah. And I guess maybe I think of the fact that I have like just the flexibility in itself is freedom, you know, when you don't have flex. I was on an airplane constantly traveling around the country, you know, in big client meetings. I had zero flexibility. I had zero freedom. And so to me like it became that flexibility in and of itself was, oh my gosh, it was like breathing for the first time. So I get what you're saying. We don't always have the freedom, you know, that the idea of the four hour work week to me is, you know, just a load of garbage.

We haven't figured that out of books.

But you know, that's.

Right.

Well, yeah, I think it's awesome. So looking at your website, you know, in my life, nothing is predictable, right? It's like I either every day, I always joke every day I started zero and I have to create it. And then at the end of the day, you look back and then you build on that. But one of the things that really struck me on your website is you, you mentioned, and use the term predictable, you mentioned that you help small business owners create predictions, predictable results. And it just really hit me, I was like, God, I would love that. Why, why is that? And how do you, why is it so important for small business owners and how do you bring that predictable, those predictable results to them?

Yeah, well, I mean, it's important for a variety of reasons, but I think especially when it comes to social, Social advertising, which is our specialty, right? That's, that's really our, our wheelhouse. And it's funny because I almost feel like even, even answering this question. You know, the majority of our, the majority of the work we do is on Facebook and there's nothing predictable about Facebook these days. So it feels a little bit, a little bit like an oxymoron there. But you know, I think what's really important for small businesses to have predictability is you can't have this whole feast and famine with your business where, you know, you're. And it's just normal, right? Where we're so busy working in our business, we're not working on our business. And a lot of times we think that traffic is like the holy grail. And so we'll turn it on and turn it off and turn it on and turn it off. And we focus. A lot of times small businesses only focus on getting the sale and they don't have this machine behind them that is constantly bringing new people into their ecosystem. And so that's actually a really big tenet of what, what we do as a, as a team. That's one of our, I guess zones of geniuses, is really, really helping our clients understand how to create messaging and how to put things, you know, out there by using paid amplification, using paid social ads to always be bringing people into their ecosystem. And some of that comes from my background in sales. Right. So yeah, I've got a degree in marketing, but then my career before starting the agency was in sales. And so I bring this kind of I don't know, sales and marketing, they say they're, they say that they don't get along, but to me, they go together like, you know, peanut butter and jelly. And so, you know, if you think about the sales process and the customer journey, you know, if you come into my ecosystem today, you know, you're listening, you're listening to this right now and you're like, oh, wow, I like her. She's, you know, she seems to know what she's talking about. You're not necessarily ready to buy yet. And, you know, we, we want to make sure that as we're bringing people in that we have a process to keep them engaged with us until they are ready to buy. And there's a way to use social advertising to nurture and to engage people until they are ready that zero moment of truth to make that buying decision. And, and that's what makes it predictable by having, essentially what we like to do is call them advertising funnels. These funnels of moving people through the customer journey so that you always. People coming into the ecosystem and at different stages in the customer journey so that on the other end of that, they're coming out as, you know, buying clients, paying customers. It's what we all want.

That's great. And is this the evergreen advertising funnel that you talk about up on your website at Divine Social? Is that right?

Yeah, that's exactly what it is. You've done a great job checking out my website. What a great interviewer. What a good host.

Gotta research.

Gotta research. Yeah, I think that's, that's really important. I think to be able to truly leverage the different social platforms, to leverage the algorithms, to leverage all those things is to have something in place that you can, unfortunately, you can't set it and forget it. That doesn't exist anymore, but that you at least have something always working. We essentially call it the three pillars to successful social ads. It's building audiences, it's creating engagement, and it's leading to conversions. And if you focus your energy on those three things, that's where that, you know, there's more to it for the evergreen ad funnel, but that's how you create predictability. And all too often people go straight for the conversion and they ignore the other two pillars. They aren't focused on growing their audiences, they aren't focused on creating engagement, but it has to be meaningful engagement and meaningful audiences. It's not really to waste, you know, to waste money. You know, we really believe we got to be a good steward of our clients money. We Want we encourage our clients to be good stewards of their own money and their own resources. But you know, having that in place that is not dependent upon a promotion or is not dependent upon the time of year is really, really important for the long term stability of a business of any type of small business.

Yeah, that it's so important. And you're talking to someone that is always going after the conversion I've spent, you know, I can tell you how many times, you know, what, how do we get them to buy something. But what you mentioned earlier, bringing them, the potential customer into their ecosystem to become this long term follower and then leading them in, is there kind of a rule of thumb how many times or how often you engage with that customer before they make that conversion? See, I'm going right towards that again.

No, no, that's okay. I mean, hey, let's face it, Shannon, the goal is conversions, right? We're not doing this because we're not a non for profit. I hope. If you're listening to the show, right, you're a small business owner, you're trying to make a living, you're trying to be profit. So you know, back in the day, you know, before I had gray hair, it was, it was, you know, they said that before even digital, that it was about seven touches before somebody, you know, on average you'd have to have seven touches with the prospect before they would buy. And a lot of this is going to depend obviously on what you're selling. You know, if you've got a low ticket item that people can make impulse buys, then that, that's out the window. If you have a more complex sale, that's a high ticket, you know, high expensive, high ticket item, well then that's going to maybe be longer. Right. I know when I was selling you complex systems at, AT and T, we had a pretty damn long sales cycle, you know, it was a long time. Right.

So yeah, the funnel, the funnel is big and long.

That's right, that's right. And so, you know, there's some statistics now and I don't know how accurate these are, but you know, everybody, there's a statistic for everything. But on average the average adult is seeing 400 marketing messages a day. So to think seven touches is enough is, is probably not true. Is it 400? Not necessarily. And so a lot of that comes with trial, trial and error. But it's essentially, you know, if you think of it this way, I always, I'm a big fan of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and I love the concept of begin with the end in mind. So if you begin with the end of the mind, which is the conversion, right, Somebody buying from you and you start to ask yourself, well, what information do they need to buy and what would they need to know before that? And what would they need to know before that? And what would they need to know before that? And how do you move them through that process? And that almost helps you reverse engineer the different types of engagement points that you need in order to move someone to a conversion. Now if you've got, you know, again, complex sales, you can have multi steps and there could be multiple ads and this whole super over engineered complex thing, or it could just be that maybe you need one or two touches with some really key pieces of content to get someone to pull the trigger or move to the next step. But it's, it's, you know, I mean, think about it. The average, you know, married couple didn't get married the first day they met, right?

And for most.

Right, there's always going to be the one, right. But, but for the most part they, they don't. And it takes, it's, it's like that with our business, right? We expect, you know, we expect to throw up an ad and that people are going to buy. And if people aren't buying right away, we think the ad's not working. But the truth is, is we haven't done our part to get the people to, you know, toe dip towards us, like to put, you know, to put the toe in the pool and then maybe get into their ankles and start to move towards, oh, this isn't so bad. Now granted, some people are going to jump right in, but if we only cater our advertising to the people who are going to jump right in, we're missing a slew of amazing potential customers.

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Awesome. So yeah, I do love that concept of working things backwards. And you know, what does the customer need to know to purchase from us? Is that the biggest misconception with small business owners when it comes to like social advertising? Are they just like me, driving towards the conversion first and kind of forgetting that other part or is there something else?

Yeah, I'd say it's probably the latter. I think it's the fact that the biggest misconception is that, you know, you can slap up a conversion ad and that's going to be the answer to everything that you have. That that's really all it. And I think overlooking the rest of it really, you know, ignoring the customer journey, ignoring that people are at different stages, you know, they're at different stages of awareness. And quite often we see, you know, we see people who run ads and, you know, they're talking to people at one stage and one stage only, and it's. It falls flat. You know, if I've never heard of you and you're talking to me in an, you know, your copy in an ad is talking to me as if I already know you, that I'm ready to make a buying decision. I'm like, what is this and who are you next? You know, like, I'm not even gonna pay attention. So I think ignoring those critical stages and, And I think the other, I guess if I could add to that, I mean, there's a lot to it, but being unwilling. Being unwilling to put your advertising dollars behind the other stages. Because so often I see people who only wanna put their money into conversion campaigns.

Totally.

And they're missing out by not. By not having other portion of their budget on the first two pillars.

I'm gonna, I am gonna take that and just play it back for every single person that we sell to here. Well, because so many people, you know, what we say is, yes, great, direct response, cool. You know, have your conversion part of it there. But the branding matters. And, and people that don't understand that will always, in our experience, will always see failure in their attempts when it's like, no, you're just not moving down the path the right way. So.

Yeah, well, and it's not that they're necessarily going to fail per se, but they're never going to reach the level of success that they could if they really architected out something that was designed to really draw people into what they're doing. You know, I mean, they'll never. Because, you know, a lot of times the, you know, the conversion campaigns, they do work. It's not that they don't work, but it's that, oh, gosh, I ran those ads. They worked really well for a couple of weeks, and then they, you know, got really expensive. We, you know, we had to shut them off. Well, they got really expensive because you. You weren't warming people up. You weren't moving people into the audiences. And I mean, I've got, you know, we've got example after example after example with, with clients of ours where we've tested this and we've. We've shown. We've even split it out in campaigns where we show them. This is how much your cost per acquisition was for Traffic. We never warmed up. And this is the cost per acquisition for Traffic. We did warm up and, you know, it was 50% cheaper and then add on top, you know, add into that what we, what we spent to warm them up, and it was still 25% cheaper, you know, and it's like you're, you're missing out by not having a bigger picture view of paid social.

Yeah. And when you say warm them up, like warming the customers up, is it things like just finding ways to add value to those potential customers so they can have a reason to have a relationship with you or something else?

Yeah. So I mean, there can be a variety of things. You know, it's, it's educating them, it's, you know, answering. You know, I, I always taught my sales staff when I was back at AT&T, we'd always really, we do a lot of training on how to overcome objections before they ever happened, you know, anticipating those things. And so sometimes we coach our clients to create content that does just that or gets into that mind of somebody who, you know, has a, has a problem, doesn't even know solutions exist, or they have a problem. They know solutions exist, but they've never heard of yours. Like, how do you educate them on those types of things? How do you inform them or get into their head and share something that they, they can have this aha moment of like, oh, gosh, I didn't, I didn't realize I needed that. You know, so, so often, you know, people, people buy what they want, but it's up to us to, to give them not only what they want, but what they really need. And you can do that through different types of content. So it could be blog content. You know, you do a simple campaign where you're driving traffic to a blog content. We, we highly, highly use video. We can use video to do something like that. You know, you can use long text depending upon what platform you're on. Like, there's so many different ways you can do it. And again, it goes back to what type of business you have. Right. It's gonna, it's gonna vary. If you're a small local business versus an E commerce business versus a service business, they're all slightly different.

And you mentioned video. Is, is video something that every business should have as part of their, you know, the system that this ecosystem that you're building or is it just, is it better suited to specific types of companies?

Well, I have yet to see a business where video doesn't work. You know, video is, I mean, it's the most consumed medium that we see when it comes to the paid social platforms. Ironically, 80% of all video is watched with the volume off. So it is impossible.

Big, big, big deal.

Big deal. So it is really important, you know, that if you're going to use videos in your advertising, that you have captions, you know, because you have to understand people are probably not going to do that. I mean, it doesn't have to be a talking head video. It could be a slideshow. It can be a demonstration. It could be, you know, you could actually take, I mean, here's an example for you guys. You could take some, not even an infographic, but you could take still images with quotes and run video with clips, you know, from the show. And you can push that into the newsfeed and amplify to promote what you're doing. And that's considered a video, even though it's not necessarily, you know, moving pictures. You know, you could have it be, you know, swapping out different quotes and things that were said. So video, Video works unequivocally across every business I've ever worked with and every, every size, shape, you name it. Because people really, we're just watching video more than we ever have. You know, think, if you think even about our own consumer behavior, how so many things are changing. I mean, we've got YouTube TV now because people aren't even. People aren't even looking at regular TV like they used to. Right? People just watch video. So now, that being said, just a little caveat, I, you know, if, if you have the budget, you want to test different types of mediums because there are people who prefer to read over people who prefer to watch and people who prefer to listen. But overall, the biggest, what we see more than anything for performing the best, especially to get people engaged at what we would call top of funnel. So this, the beginning stages of the customer journey video is incredibly powerful.

Yeah, that's.

I think, I think your experience in sales is, is one of the, one of sort of the secret weapons that you've got here. Because so many people that are doing this kind of marketing are just like you said, you know, people say sales and marketing don't mix. And it's because they're just focusing on, oh, let's get the message out, let's get the message out. You're saying, let's get, get the message out because we want to generate sales. So let's look at the sales side at the same time. And I think that that magic mix for you is, is the secret weapon that makes you successful for you and of course, for your clients.

Well, I'd like to think so. I mean, it's It's. I don't know, you know, it's interesting. You know, a lot of my peers, I've met a lot of great people that, you know, are in the social advertising game. And then there's a lot of people that, you know, they were like, hey, you know, I want freedom. I'm going business. I'm going to take a Facebook ads class and put up a shingle, and, you know, good for them. But, you know, I bring. I definitely bring a different perspective that a lot of people don't have. I mean, not, not many people have the privilege to work for a Fortune 10 company at the level that I did. So I would like to think that that is a big piece of it. And I know my staff will say that they've grown tremendously because I'm constantly teaching them sales psychology. Because that's not taught in marketing classes.

No, it's not. That's the thing is, I've never understood why these two things are separate. It's like, well, what's the point of the marketing? Is it to sell things? Cool. Well, then let's get some salespeople in here and talk about that. You know.

Exactly, exactly. And that's why I'm always like, you know, when you said, like, the branding piece is important, like, people shouldn't overlook it, you know, that always makes me a little bit nervous because I've always thought branding is a waste of money, and I know that it's not. Right. I know that branding isn't. But that, that, you know, we are designing the building out audiences and building engagement campaigns. We're designing them to ultimately sell things, of course, just to. Not just to brand, I meant.

But the branding side. When you said we need to warm people up, I heard that as we need to, like that branding is what warms. One of the things that warms people up. Then you come in and so that, that was sort of where I was. I was bringing in the branding for that.

Well, and I knew, I knew that's what you meant. But I think my sales hat always is like, you know, it's, you know, I'm not a traditional branding agency. Not even close, because.

Oh, no, yeah, yeah, of course.

Yeah. Well, definitely.

You take it all the way through the funnel, as you should. Right. I mean, like, that's the right thing. But ignoring any part of the funnel, you know, if all you're doing is branding, I mean, if your goal is to sell things and all you're doing is branding, you're probably not going to sell Things. And if all you're doing is trying to convert people, you're also probably not going to sell things.

Right, exactly.

You got to warm them up first, then pull them through the rest of the funnel.

Yeah, Yep, exactly.

Makes sense. Okay, so I have some other questions, not necessarily related to social advertising, but I want to ask you one last one. One of the things that always tough for me and my businesses is trying to figure out, you know, where does. Everybody's trying to stretch their budget and, you know, where do I go? Does it, do I pump it all into Facebook, Instagram, should I be LinkedIn, should I be doing Twitter things? Is that something that you help, you know, part of your service, that you help your customers figure out? This is where we need to be because this is the best act, you know, most activity we're seeing. How does that work?

Yeah, so that's kind of like a, that's the holy grail, I guess. That's the, that's the million dollar question. So, you know, one of the things that it is a challenge, especially when your budget, when you, you know, you're on a shoestring budget or, you know, you just don't have the big budgets that some of these, you know, huge companies have. So a lot of times it's like, okay, number one, what's your offer? Like, what's, what's the pricing of your offer? Who's your ideal, you know, your ideal prospects? Like, who, who are they? And from there we kind of start to reverse engineer, like, where are they? Now? The reality is, is as of today, you know, in spite of where we are in the world in 2020, the majority of the people are on Facebook and Instagram. That's where they are. And so the majority of our clients are going to be running campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. That, that tends to be the place where we're going to get the greatest bang for our buck using paid social media. And so that, that tends to be. If I've got somebody that has a very, very small budget, Even if they're B2B, we almost always push them towards Facebook and Instagram first. Now, there, there are some exceptions to that from time to time, but usually that's, that's the right place. But then there are other things to take into consideration. You know, again, who's the target audience? What's the demographic? You know, we're starting to see, we're starting to see some of the other social ad platforms or some of the other social platforms really step up their advertising game. So you Know, we started actually recently doing a whole lot on Pinterest, which is, you know, really, really good for specific industries. We do a lot in the arts and crafts space, in the DIY home improvement space. And that's amazing for those, those folks as well as some others. There's, you know, there's other categories as well, but that's a, that's a totally different situation. That's an even longer play than we see on Facebook. It's. Right, it's just a. But it's, it's kind of a weird little platform. Right? And then you've got up and coming with Snapchat and TikTok. So if you've got a younger demographic, then you know, that's a great place to be running ads. And so some of it's going to depend on all the things I mentioned. But then also the other thing that falls into the decision making is as a, as the business owner, what types of creatives can you create to support the campaigns? If you can't, if you can't get the, you know, you don't have the money, you don't have the resources to get the creatives you need for something like a TikTok or a Snapchat. You might, you know, you might need to just stick with Facebook and Instagram. But that is definitely something that, that we, number one, we're always trying to keep our finger on the pulse of what's happening on all the platforms because, you know, that's, that's what we do. We're social ads agencies.

That's your job.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then secondly, we just, we need to make sure that we're gonna help our clients get the best bang for our buck. So a lot of times we start with Facebook and Instagram and then once we really get some strong success and some good metrics, then we start dipping our, you know, dipping our clients toes in some of the other platforms and making sure that it is going to, it is going to reach their objectives because they don't always, you know, so.

Yeah, sure, that's great. So, okay. We talk about mistakes on the show a lot. I'm sure it's because I've made so many. But, you know, we're here and one of the things we ask every guest is to talk about their best mistakes. Something that really taught you a lesson that you may refer back to, you know, from, from time to time. Do you have something like that you could share with us?

Probably more than I'd like to admit. I'd say actually there's a recent mistake that I've really realized recently that it was a huge, huge blessing in disguise, but it was miserable while it was happening. We had a client that wanted to hire us a couple years ago. And it was just the weirdest, you know, as I, as the sales rep. Right. It was the strangest situation, trying to bring this client on. Really stressful, really, just weird. I don't really know how else to say it. And, you know, then they'd go radio silent and then they'd come back and it'd be urgent and we never closed the deal. And at the end of last year, they came to us and they were, you know, they really, really needed us for a huge launch. And, you know, honestly, I actually had a panic attack. I had a panic attack when I was putting together, you know, the numbers to bring this client on. And I just, I should have listened to my gut. But we didn't.

Your dog remembers this panic attack.

My dog remembers the panic attack. And actually, she's like, your biggest mistake is ordering from Amazon. They're probably at the door. Sure. Well, so we ended up not, you know, the client didn't. Couldn't get their act together. Sure enough, they couldn't get their act together for the launch. And, you know, that came and went. And then, you know, the pandemic hit and they re engaged us again. And, you know, at the time, we were just in this serve, serve, serve mode. We know we can really help businesses if we could help them do social ads right. During the season. Like we're going to make a huge impact. And so we took them on, on, and we took them on alto because it was going to be a very lucrative contract. And it ended up being five months of absolute torture. Absolute torture. I almost lost my staff. I almost lost my best, you know, my right hand. And I knew and I've known for years. Right. You don't follow the money. You don't take it just because of the money.

Trust your gut on those things.

Yeah, well, my God, my gut was telling me with a pant attack, how much more real could it be?

That's right.

So, I mean, that was a huge mistake. I mean, I tried to be a very rational thinker, but I should have, I really, really should have listened to that screaming sirens that were going off in my body when I first done.

And those, those warning signs, right, where they would go silent and everything's an emergency, that kind of stuff.

Yeah. Well, the good news is, is it is the only client that I've had to I've had to fire and it was, it was a big, it was a six figure contract and I let them go. And it was the, it was one of the proudest moments in my career where I felt so good and I think that the, you know, the, the emotional deposits that I put into my, you know, my team's bank account like that, I picked them over anything else was, was huge. So.

Yeah, yeah, that's great, that's great. Yeah, that'll, that'll, I, I predict that will pay dividends ends many times over down the road, but yeah, for sure.

So one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the show is because I always look at the people's talent stack. What are they working on? Different things. And we get approached, as you can imagine, by all kinds of coaches and social media folks. But one of the things I liked about your background is you also have some experience with E commerce selling on marketplaces like Amazon and things. And I love, love marketplace selling. It's been a really big part of my life and my success. But I, I, I am well aware of some of the pitfalls of, you know, relying too much on these types of sales. And, and you had a comment there that I really like. Can you expand on the importance of balancing out selling direct versus relying solely on a marketplace for selling your products?

Oh, gosh, yeah. I mean, we've, we've had the privilege to partner with a couple of clients that unfortunately had all their eggs in a marketplace basket and you know, one thing went wrong and they didn't have a business. And so I just, I firmly believe that it's, I think some of the channels are amazing and if I were to tell you that, you know, we should ban, you know, we should never order from Amazon and I'd be a hypocrite because I, you know, I'm not joking when that could have been Amazon.

Too damn convenient.

It is.

Your dog let the cat out of the room.

I know, I know, she just, she's busted later. But you know, I mean, it's amazing what they've done and what they, I mean, gosh, how they've, they've, you know, essentially brought anything you could possibly imagine to our fingertips. It's, it's amazing. But that being said, you know, whether it's Amazon or Etsy or ebay or any of the different platforms, you don't own the customer relationship. And I, and I think that's the key. And you know, I, we've got, gosh, one of our biggest clients has so many different channels that they sell through. They sell through, you know, major, major big box retailers, they sell through Amazon, they sell through so many different places, you know, qvc, home shopping. And then they have a really, really big direct to consumer website. And it's been really fun working with them. Now, now we really only focus on the direct to consumer side of things. But you know, the majority of, of what we do for them is top of funnel. So we know that there's a halo effect and it affects all of their channels. But by them controlling, you know, by them controlling the relationship for a huge part of their business, there's so much more that we can do in terms of increasing lifetime customer value, increasing average order value. There's so much that we can control that I think it's incredibly important. If it were me, if I was an E commerce store owner, I would make darn sure that I had my direct to consumer site really dialed in tightly before I started leaning on some of these other places and not vice versa. Because, because I, I don't know, I just, I've seen it happen so many times where, you know, you, you've got this, in a sense, it's like a false sense of security with your business from a marketplace that isn't, you know, what if that goes away? And that's part of why we, we've branched out from just Facebook and Instagram because I can't have my clients, all my clients ad dollars in one platform that could bump its head one night and, you know, cancel all of our ad accounts. You know, so we deal with this.

Just with, with app developers. It's a great, they're. App developers are a great example, especially you know, on the Apple side where there, there is, you know, there is the Apple Store and that's the only place to buy things. And that's where all the customers exist. And I always try to point out to people, you know, you don't have thousands of customers. Apple has thousands, nay, millions of customers. You have one customer and it's Apple. And until, until you figure out how to engage with the person that bought your app from Apple, they are not your customer. Right? You know, they are Apple's customer. And, and this exact same thing is true here. The good news is, of course, if you're selling, you know, not an app, you can, you can sell that in Amazon and also sell it on your own. So you have that opportunity to do something separate from the one customer here. But it's, it's a, it's a really important Lesson. I just wanted to shine a light on it here because I think it's, it's something, it's so easy to get lulled into that easy sense of, wow, there's people and they're buying my stuff. I have all these customers and it's great. Like it is great with Amazon, but be careful, there is a pitfall here. You don't know any of those people and more importantly, they don't know you.

Yes, well, and I mean, it gets even deeper than that and we don't have to get too deep in it, but I mean, I had a client who had a seven figure business on Etsy and, and because of demand, she got too many negative reviews and Etsy, without any warning, shut her down completely. She lost seven figures of revenue. You know, and, and there's other pitfalls at Amazon. You know, we started to see where you've got something that's hot and they're going to find a way to source it. And not that they always do that, but I mean, you just have to, it can happen. It can happen.

It's up to them, it's not up to you. And that's the key is, you know, if your business is all coming through, or most of it, even if more than 50% of it is coming through through one channel, you know, you work for somebody else now, so.

Yep, exactly.

Yeah. And I think a big part of what I've learned over the years on marketplaces is that policies never stay the same. So one thing that was working that you were doing, it could change in a heartbeat. And the marketplace could say, hey, we're not going to do that anymore or we're not going to allow that, or this is the new way it's going to be handled. This is the new fee structure. And so you really have to be prepared for, for the inevitable change that's coming your way.

It's true. It's very true.

So, Tracy, one of the things we do this show to help other small business owners and I love all the tips and everything you've given us, and one of the things that we're doing is trying to get the term small business changed to a verb because we think action is such an important part of being successful. And so we, one of the things we started doing is asking our guests, is there one action item that you can tell our small business owner listeners to go do today, something they could do today related to your social advertising or even something else that would help them be more successful right away?

Well, I'd say If I could leave them with one action, because I love that it should be, you know, small business is an action, right? If there is one action that you could take to leverage paid social a little bit better, if you're currently not, I would say, I'd say look at, think about, you know, take a little bit of time and brainstorm. What kind of video could you produce that tells a story of how you solve people's problems, how you, you know, fix their pains, how you, you know, how you make their lives better? And it doesn't have to be, you know, you don't have to go out and, and, you know, get a video producer to do something like this. It could literally be a, you know, could be a slideshow video where you have, you know, text overlay telling the story. But I'd be thinking about how could you create a video, two minutes and under, that could tell the story of what you do at a, you know, at a high level with a lot of value, you know, why it's going to make someone's life better. And, and then I would really, seriously. And if that's, if that's, if that's all you can do, have a, have a call to action at the end of the video for them to connect with you, you, however it makes sense for you and put some money behind it. See if you can put a couple hundred dollars behind that and run that. Let it run for a month, let it run for a long enough times that it gets in front of enough people and start to see how many new eyeballs you got on your business by putting a couple hundred dollars and maybe a couple of hours of your brain behind something and see what that does to start to balloon out. You were taking people from cold market, people who've never heard of you, to people who are now technically lukewarm because they've now engaged with you on some level. And they could be great potential to be taken to the next level. So that would be the action. I would take something as simple as that one video. You know, there's, there's not. I know somebody that's brilliant.

I'm quiet because I'm processing like, damn, she's totally right. I need to do that. Which is the best kind of reaction to have, by the way. So.

Oh, good, good.

Yeah, it's. You're totally right because it, you're, you know, an afternoon and a couple of hundred bucks and you now, at the, at the very worst, you have a lot more information when you're at the, when you're at the end of that and probably, like you said, some more warmed up potential customers, but. And do yourself a lot more information.

A lot more information. I mean, we didn't even talk about the, like, the value of just the information you gather by doing this kind of thing. But, you know, do yourself a favor and commit, you know, commit to whatever it is. You know, let's say, let's say it's a hundred bucks, right? Or it would even be 90. No. Yeah. 100 bucks. 150. Right. $5 a day, 30 days in a month. Let's set aside 150 and just let it run. Don't, don't even, don't even stress out about it because for that little amount, the mistake people make, and I mean, I had a dear friend the other day, you know, beg me, please, please, please, my wife's business. Can you take a look at the ad I ran? And it was like, okay, you know, there were so many things that I, you know, I looked at it all, but ultimately, like, you didn't even let it run. You let it run for like three days and you shut it off. So I think if you, if you could just set that aside and just keep it really simple and just know that your goal is that you're going to get as much information as you can from that and you're going to, you're going to introduce, you're going to introduce your business to as many people as possible during that, that window and see what happens.

See what happens. Well, and it like, at the very least, you get over your fear of failure with this thing you've never done before. You may, you may confirm your failure with it. That's totally fine because you can.

Right?

Well, because confirmation of failure is way more empowering than the fear of it. Right. Because now, you know, oh, I did this thing. It really wasn't all that hard. Of course I was terrible at it and I failed, but I, I know what to fix now. Right. And, and there you go. You're off to the race, so.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I guess one other piece of advice. Just because it fails doesn't mean it doesn't work.

Oh, I like that.

Oh, I'm taking that to the bank.

That's great. So, Tracy, thanks again for coming on the show. Talking about Divine Social, about social advertising, all this stuff, some really great tips. What's the best ways for our listeners to connect with you and to learn more about Divine Social Media?

Oh, gosh. Well, first of all, if you're listening and you are Running ads. And here's what I'm gonna do because Shannon and Dave are awesome and we've had too much fun on this. If you're running ads and you are doing at least, let's say your budget's at least 3,000amonth or more and you really want to make sure that you're on the right track, email me directly. All right, I'll give you my personal email. This isn't my admin or anything like that. It's Tracy T R A C I. So Tracy with an I, email me and I'll set up a 15 minute call with you to just give you a quick rundown to make sure you're on the right track. So we'll do that.

First of all, wow, that's awesome.

Secondly, for everybody else, because I know most people aren't doing that right. But for the rest of you, if you go to divinesocial.com SBS for the small business show, I've got a mini class. I alluded to our three pillars to successful social ads and I have a video course. It's, it's just, it's not very long at all. It's probably 15, 20 minutes with some worksheets that walks you through the three pillars and really helps you create a plan so that you could, you could start to execute this for yourself. On a small level. I would highly recommend that you go there and grab that, download that course and then on that page it has links to all my social and you can connect with me all over the place.

Wow, perfect.

Thank you.

That's really great. That's a, yeah, that's a great add value. So great to talk with you. Please keep in touch, come back and update us from time to time. And thank you again. We appreciate it so much.

Oh, thanks for having me.

Oh, man, I feel like I learned the most today. Shannon, this was excellent.

That's usually me, but I, and I would argue that I probably did. But you know, I love one of the points you made earlier about her sales experience. Really changes the framework that she uses for her business of social marketing. And that's a huge thing that I.

I, I don't think as an entrepreneur, I, I mean, I always hired salespeople because, you know, a, I didn't really like it. I mean, I liked, I liked when sales came in. Don't get me wrong. But the sales process is, is full of negativity. Right? You know, I always say if you, if you make 20 phone calls and you have, have 19 of them say no, you succeeded Right. So I would always hire salespeople and I dismissed the value of the sales process until about three years ago when, you know, my world sort of turned upside down and I found myself in a sales role and I found myself in a sales role needing to sell right away. And so I did. And we've turned the business around and it's actually way healthier and way better than it ever has been. But it made me realize all of the things that she was saying. I mean, these were things that we were preaching to our customers about. You can't ignore what I called the branding side of it, the top of the funnel, the warming up of the customer. Like you have to do all of these things, but without the sort of the hands on experience of doing that again and again and again, it's easy as an entrepreneur to dismiss it. And like you said, just be focused on, just get the sales, just get the sale. What are you, what are you wasting your time with? Just get the sale. It's like. No, no, no. Like in order to not waste your time, you can't just be focused on getting the sale.

Right.

Yeah, it's great.

And just some really great tips. It's such a weird, sticky kind of malleable ecosystem out there on, on where to put your money and all the kind of stuff. And I, I really think most small business owners, especially if, like she was saying, you're going to spend, you know, a few thousand dollars a month, you ought to have somebody that really can monitor it, help you measure the success and adjust as needed. I've thrown tens of thousands of dollars away at it, thinking I could do it myself or have an employee do it.

Right.

And in my experience, it just doesn't work as well.

It doesn't, no.

Yeah. Bring in the specialists and I think you'll be more successful.

Yeah, yeah. But experts are good.

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely.

Or at the very least, someone who is solely focused on it, but even better if that person is an expert the day you bring them on. So. Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, no, that's great.

Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I was going to say, I want to say it again because I think this line is one I'm going to use over and over again. And that's. Just because it fails doesn't, doesn't mean it didn't work. What a brilliant is good.

Oh, it has to go up on the wall.

It's going on. Yeah, because it's so true. I mean, as soon as she said it, it was like, oh, you know, perfect. It was one of those magic phrases, man.

Yep, it is. Yeah, that's right. Well, we hope you enjoyed the show. We'd love for you to leave us a review at the podcast directory of your choice, wherever you're listening to this. I know it's a big ask. Every every podcast I listen to asks for it. I don't do it enough for them. We'd love some more of you to do it for us, and it really makes a big difference. You can also just go to BusinessShow Co reviews, and that'll redirect you over to the Apple Podcast directory to leave that review for us. We appreciate it.

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