SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
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Social Media strategies to increase profitability with Traci Reuter
- I have just recently done a YouTube video, talking about how social media popularity does not equal profitability.
- Reach is important and all those things are important, but the end of the day, it’s got to be the right people.
- We look at the customer journey, like what’s the typical customer journey?
- The only way to stay on top of the constant changes and be world-class is to just laser focus.
- We start with the end in mind.
- If you think out of every 100 people, two are going to buy, what are your plan and your strategy for the other 98?
- If you’re going to invest in marketing, then invest in utilizing all of the tools to the best of their ability, so you can increase your likelihood of growing your business, growing your profits, growing your bottom line.
- That branding piece, even though we might not be getting a huge ROI upfront, long term, the ROI, it’s amazing what we’re seeing.
- That whole concept of warming up your audience beforehand, it really, really can make such an impact when you’re ready to pull the trigger on an offer.
- You have to have a long game mindset for this to really work for you.
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SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
Social Media popularity does not equal profitability.
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Doug Morneau: Well, welcome back listeners to another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. Today, I’m super excited to have Traci Reuter in studio joining us today. She is the Founder and the CEO of a company called Divine Social. She is passionate about supporting businesses in growing their brands through authentic, meaningful social media advertising. Traci has the uncanny gift for looking at any business’s mission, vision, and message and mapping out the right social media strategy to get their brand in front of the right people at the right time.
I so enjoyed our conversation, speaking with somebody who has sales and marketing experience that’s in the advertising space. She has 25 years of sales and marketing experience and she really knows her stuff when we start talking about high-level marketing strategy. Traci combined her tactical knowledge of social media advertising, so she can write the recipe for any brand’s success and hopefully, you’ll enjoy the conversation as much as I did. She shared some of her greatest secrets behind mapping out your own powerful social media advertising strategy. With that said, I like to welcome Traci Reuter to the Real Marketing Real Fast Podcast today.
Well, hey Traci, I’m super excited to have you on the show today, so welcome to the Real Marketing Real Fast Podcast today.
Traci Reuter: Well, thanks for having me, Doug. I’m super excited to be here.
Doug Morneau: I was excited because when I was looking at your background before we logged on and when I first was introduced to you, I thought, “Wow, what an amazing story.” You’re working in an area that I absolutely love, which is sales and marketing, but you’re doing it from a paid point of view and not a strategy, how do I get more Facebook likes and followers? Do you want to just fill in the blanks a little bit on what your agency does and kind of what sets you apart from everyone else?
Traci Reuter: Yeah that’s a great thing the way lead off with that. I have just recently done a YouTube video, talking about how social media popularity does not equal profitability. That’s probably the biggest reason why my agency is what it is. I’ve been doing actually background in marketing, had a degree in marketing several years ago, many moons ago and then, went to work for here in the States, a Fortune 10 company, a small little telecommunications company most people have heard of, called AT&T. I led a sales division there for several years. I was working in the B2B channel, calling on clients like Motorola, United Airlines and Joe’s Plumbing, everything in between. I have kind of an interesting background and then, I ended up on the digital online space because really it was because my husband got very, very sick on my 29th birthday. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease when he was just 34 and I couldn’t be working 80 hours a week, traveling for corporate America. I didn’t know what to do.
Through a long twist and turn journey, I ended up being mentored by an affiliate marketer and got to learn all the ins and outs of digital and ended up fast-forward about five years ago, launched my agency because I really saw the ability to take my sales background, my marketing degree, my digital experience and to really be able to take amazing companies that have a powerful message or a powerful product and help them amplify it in a way that they can get in front of the right people and increase their profitability. It’s been a wild ride, let me put it that way.
Doug Morneau: I love the word you’re using is amplification because everyone is trying to increase the reach and build their numbers up, but I think in one of your YouTube videos, I had seen you talked about, it’s really about engagement, it’s not about having a zillion followers. It’s about having a handful of people that engage with you.
Traci Reuter: Yeah, it’s really about the right people. I mean it is important, reach is important and all those things are important, but the end of the day, it’s got to be the right people. It’s going to be who’s your ideal client and how can you get your message in front of them, so that it’s a win-win for everybody. What makes us a little bit different is I think it has to do with my sales background is we look at the customer journey, like what’s the typical customer journey? If you look at Google’s definition from awareness to consideration and all the way up to that zero moments of truth and how can you use digital marketing, how can you use content amplification? How can you put your dollars strategically and intentionally behind campaigns that can shorten that customer journeys that you can start doing business and adding value to their lives faster? That’s really our biggest focus of how we architect out all of our client campaigns.
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SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
Social Media popularity does not equal profitability.
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Doug Morneau: With the work that you guys are doing now in the social space, the paid social space, I mean that’s a changing landscape. I mean I can’t imagine these days get up in the morning and log in and say, “Hey, what’s changed last night before I left the office?”
Traci Reuter: Well that is exactly why up until this point, we only focus on social media ads because of that exact reason. When I first was learning digital, I was learning everything, search engine optimization and email marketing and how to build websites and you name it, all of it. I quickly realized that there was no way we could be excellent if we were trying to do it all. There’s a really great book, I can’t remember the author’s name off the top of my head, but it’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You. I was already thinking, “Gosh, we really have to specialize.” After reading that book, I just decided, “You know what, the only way to stay on top of the constant changes and be world-class is to just laser focus.” That was a decision that we made and sometimes, I wonder if I’m crazy because having all your eggs in Mark Zuckerberg’s basket can be frightening at times. We are always looking at the trends and what’s happening, but right now for my team to be excellent, we have to stay focused on that because things do change so, so quickly. It’s a fun ride.
Doug Morneau: Someone who works with agencies and being an agency myself, so how do you integrate that with a client strategy because you talked about the strategy is very important because the tactics will change, so social media paid, social, Facebook, Instagrams one side. Then, as you mentioned, there’s SEO and there’s content strategy and there’s email marketing, which I see you’ve got lots of experience in as well. How do you help your clients navigate that piece because you have the pros in one area and they’ve likely got other people on their team or other teams in those other areas?
Traci Reuter: Yeah, so one of the things that we always do whenever we engage with a new client and whenever I’m coaching, whatever it is that I’m doing, I go back to one of my favorite oldies, but a goodie is Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. What we do is we start with the end in mind. That’s one of his seven habits. The end goal should be the same whether you’re doing email marketing or SEO.
Every business typically has the ultimate end goal and then, what we’re basically doing from that point is we’re working backward to build out the client strategy. Really, ideally if possible, we’re integrating with the email team and the SEO team because we should all be moving in the same direction hopefully if we’re doing things right. By having that strategy that always points towards the client’s end goal. Then, as the tactics change from day to day, like right now, the big thing in paid social media, especially with Facebook and Instagram is this campaign budget optimization, like that’s really changing the game. That’s really a new tactic. It’s not a strategy. It’s a tactic of how you execute your campaigns.
Even though Facebook is constantly, it feels like throwing flares in front of us, our strategy stays, it’s true north. Once we get that we know what the client is after, we know what we’re working towards. We always have that strategy that we’re building around and working towards and then, we just adapt as the different things change. Sometimes, the changes that come are for the better and sometimes, they’re not. We have to work within that. If we were a tactic agency, if we were just focused on that then we would be tossed around like a boat on a bad storm. That’s no good.
Doug Morneau: Sure, as we talked about before we got on the air, I mean look at some of the companies that are tied into the social media side and the changes in Facebook and Instagram now made it prohibitive for them to keep their business running. They [inaudible 00:07:59] or close the doors.
Traci Reuter: Yeah, exactly. I mean that’s the thing is if you’re so tied to specific tactics and I mean [inaudible 00:08:07]. I mean we’ve seen this happen over the last five years, where there have been companies that saw a void that was missing with the platform. They filled the void and then, Facebook went and change something so that they filled the void.
Doug Morneau: That’s right.
Traci Reuter: That’s definitely something that there’s been a lot of talks around, especially with [inaudible 00:08:25] paid social is that with some of the AI that’s coming out that eventually, media buyers won’t be necessary. I can totally see that happening because typically people who are strictly media buyers are just executing tactics. They’re not necessarily strategists. That helps me sleep a little bit at night because I know that AI can’t necessarily duplicate our brains just yet anyway.
Doug Morneau: I like one of the comments that I saw on your [inaudible 00:08:53]. That’s when the clients buy.
Traci Reuter: Yeah.
Doug Morneau: I mean we look at the common strategy these days is build a sales funnel, drive them in the front page, sign them up, send them your email sequence, talk about scarcity and that doesn’t match your answer, which was when they’re ready.
Traci Reuter: Well, this is a lesson that I brought into my agency from back in the day when I was with AT&T. One of the things and I’m going to age myself here, but this is pre-Facebook. This is really pre-internet. I was doing this in the mid to late 90s, early 2000s and back then, it was on average, it would take about seven touches before you could convert a prospect to a client. Today, we’ve got over 400 marketing messages a day that the average person is getting bombarded with. That just makes everything so much more challenging. The thing that I see a lot of businesses kind of fall down on is on average, about 2% of people that see your offer are going to buy right away, 2%. If you think out of every 100 people, two are going to buy, what are your plan and your strategy for the other 98? How are you wooing them? How are you engaging them? How are you providing value and building trust, so that when that ready to buy a moment comes that they’re thinking of you? That’s just something that I know a lot of people ignore social media traffic. They don’t want to put their money in social media ads for things like that because they’re just thinking solely about trying to convert that initial 2%.
Really, by putting a little bit of investment into nurturing those people, which we commonly do with emails, but email open rates are going down. There are their ways to help boost that and so that’s something that we really encourage our clients to do is actually have a plan for that other 98%.
Doug Morneau: Well, it’s funny because I use social media the other way. In my business, most of the strategies that we use are we partner with publishers that have great relationships with their subscribers and that we get them to sponsored email to their subscribers. We paid for that. At the end of the day, we wire them the money. The email goes out. The money is all gone. The opens and the clicks, whatever they are is what they are. We’re taking the opposite approach. We’ve leveraged the social media by making sure we’ve got a tracking pixel in for Google and Facebook, so we can carry on the conversation and we can enhance that relationship and try to get more value out of that one relationship, where they got an email once. Once the landing page, some signed up, some didn’t and then, went away.
Traci Reuter: Yeah, I think the companies that really take the omnichannel approach, like using all of the tools, especially if you’re trying to grow in scale, people are so distracted. Social media has changed our culture and I’ve got a love-hate relationship with it. We’ve got issues with addiction and people being [inaudible 00:11:45] all that. I mean if you’re going to invest in marketing, then invest in utilizing all of the tools to the best of their ability, so you can increase your likelihood of growing your business, growing your profits, growing your bottom line.
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SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
Social Media popularity does not equal profitability.
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Doug Morneau: Well and early on when paid social was just coming out, we ran the numbers for campaigns we’re running and social media was always the lowest cost to conversion. Direct mail is the most expensive and then, Google pay-per-click and then, email and then, social media was always the cheapest, but we could never scale social media when I first started taking sponsored ads because there wasn’t the volume there.
Traci Reuter: Yeah and sometimes that is something you got to be careful with, right? I mean it is the lowest cost to convert at times, but is it the best lifetime value of a client? That’s something you want to definitely take into consideration and that’s why I always recommend to people that when you’re architecting out these campaigns, you want to make sure you’re including all three [inaudible 00:12:44] of traffic. Most people, you think of social ads as cold traffic. You’re trying to grow your audience, which is very important and it’s also incredibly good for retargeting, which is warm traffic. Then, the final one is hot traffic, like people who’ve already bought from you. If you’ve got multiple offerings, you want to make sure that you are leveraging … Leverage the social media platforms by using amplified paid posts, where you can get them to order more or buy more. I mean a lot of it depends on what your business model is, right?
Doug Morneau: Sure, yeah.
Traci Reuter: If it’s e-commerce, we use those all the time to try to increase the average order value or increase the lifetime customer value, but the old adage of it’s less expensive to keep a client than to acquire a new one is still true. We can’t forget about that. A lot of times when I’m talking to new clients or potential clients, it’s never crossed their mind to use paid social media to retain their clients. It can be a very, very small part of your budget, but it can be extremely effective.
Doug Morneau: It’s also emotional [inaudible 00:13:48]. I mean people make buying decisions often on emotion and they want to justify why they bought. I think that sometimes that strategies like you’re saying, a paid social reinforces they made a good decision.
Traci Reuter: Oh, absolutely. I mean there’s right now all the buzz is storytelling, story marketing and you’ve got story brand and brand story and all these different things. I mean there’s a reason that that is so effective is that we as a human beings love story. We love to tell stories. We love to hear stories. We love to watch stories. That’s why people love podcasts so much.
At that level of hot traffic of buyers of reinforcing their decision, you could be using storytelling, telling them more, getting them more emotionally tied and more loyal to your brand. [inaudible 00:14:36] to that Doug that I think is really important right now is really understanding how to use paid social, not just for conversions, not just for lead gen, not just for your webinar registrations, not just for sales, but also for branding because right now. It’s still at a point, where it is incredibly inexpensive to use paid social media for that. The clients of ours that really get behind that philosophy, we’re seeing that their overall acquisition costs are going down. It’s incredibly, incredibly powerful when we start to break out when we compare like this is how much it cost us to convert. The people we’ve been engaging with and staying in front of versus people who we kind of haven’t communicated to for six months or longer.
That branding piece, even though we might not be getting a huge ROI upfront, long term, the ROI, it’s amazing what we’re seeing.
Doug Morneau: Well and we’re working on a campaign now, where we’re using social media upfront before we email to warm up the audience because we know who the audience is. We can market just to the audience, so the audience is warmer and more receptive when the email hits their inbox.
Traci Reuter: It’s so huge. We did that recently for a client of ours that had a huge book launch, a traditionally published book. We’ve done it now a few times with some authors, where a lot of times people will come to me after they published the book and they’re like, “How can you help me sell books?” Really, the key in this example was we started amplifying. We knew who the ideal buyer was. We started taking very congruent and this is the key. It’s that whole concept of beginning with the end in mind and working backward, so we took congruent content that the natural next step would be either another piece of content to the book or straight to the book. We amplified that content for about 30 days before the book launch happened. We ended up getting that in front of about 4 million people, which was amazing. This client has been on the Today Show and Good Morning America and ranked number one on Amazon for four or five different categories and made the USA Today. I’m sorry, we didn’t make the New York Times. Turns out, I didn’t know this, but the New York Times is a curated list. It’s not actually about book sales. We made everything but the New York Times.
Doug Morneau: I did learn that. I’ve never been there, but I did hear that. Yes, that’s funny.
Traci Reuter: Yeah, so anyway what you’re talking about 100% works. That whole concept of warming up your audience beforehand, it really, really can make such an impact when you’re ready to pull the trigger on an offer.
Doug Morneau: I also think and looking through your material, I mean it’s a long game. Listeners, if you’re thinking I can just pull the trigger and at the end of the week, I can generate enough sales to pay my rent, wrong. It’s not the strategy for you.
Traci Reuter: No, it is a long game, it really is. I think that’s another thing too is in fact somebody was just interviewing me earlier and asking kind of about the mindset. I’m like, “You’ve got to have a long game approach here because if you think you’re going to get into paid social and hit the jackpot in 24 hours, like go to Vegas. That’s not going to happen.” It really is something that I’ve seen over the past five years and managing millions of dollars of ads. Typically, we see things really hitting stride somewhere around month four. Not that you don’t get results before then because you can and we do all the time, but I’m talking about hitting stride, where it’s dependable and consistent. Not everybody has the intestinal fortitude to make it that long. You have to have a long game mindset for this to really work for you.
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SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
Social Media popularity does not equal profitability.
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Doug Morneau: Why do you think that is? Why do you think it takes three to four months to really, like you said, “Hit your stride.”
Traci Reuter: Well, a lot of it has to do with like dialing in the messaging, dialing in the audience, dialing in the advertising funnel. That’s the thing is a lot of people when they start on social media, they don’t really have an advertising funnel. They might have a sales funnel. They don’t actually have a [inaudible 00:18:40] a very intentional process to move people through their actual sales funnel. It usually takes some time to get all of those pieces really firing on all cylinders. It just does. Some of it’s the algorithm, some of it is really finding, getting your creative right, getting all those things dialed in. Those things do not happen overnight. God knows I wish they did. I’ve got a client right now that unfortunately, the algorithm seems to … It’s like they’re taking a hard right turn every 20 minutes. It’s really difficult. I don’t expect it to be like that forever, but it’s just one of those things that it does take some time for things to stabilize. If you don’t understand that going in, then you’re going to think, “This isn’t working, I’m losing money, this isn’t good.” Mindset is huge on the paid social game.
Doug Morneau: Well, I want to shift gears because what’s become obvious to me and my hope obvious to our listeners is that there’s a lot of moving pieces. I’m not against the do-it-yourself. Lots of stuff, I do it myself and lots of stuff, I just make sure I find the smartest people. You don’t have to look very far online to hear people say, “Hey, I’ve tried Facebook and it doesn’t work and I’ve tried the paid social, doesn’t work.” Then, you hear guys like Gary Vaynerchuk said, “It works, it just didn’t work for you.” I want to talk about you being an agency owner, so give our listeners an idea of what the experience is like and what the process is like for many people who may be doing it themselves and are thinking, “Well, maybe I need to bring in an expert or bring in somebody else,” that might be scary or overwhelming. What does that look like?
Traci Reuter: Yeah, it’s a really excellent question. The way I see it is there are three levels of help when it comes to bringing in help for social media traffic. Number one would be your freelancer. That’s typically somebody who doesn’t have an agency. They’re essentially a one-man or one-woman show. Sometimes, it’s because they’re just getting started out and usually, those people are going to be technicians. They’re not necessarily strategists, but they’re the ones who know that changing tactics and the ins and outs and they can take things over for you. Now, depending upon the size and state of your business that can be incredibly helpful just because somebody else doing the day-to-day while you’re thinking about things. The key with that is you have to remember odds are freelancer, not in all cases, but in many, many cases, a freelancer isn’t … You’re not going to be bringing them on for strategy. They don’t necessarily have the experience in that. It might not be their sweet spot and you’re going to get what you pay for. That’s one thing.
Then, the next level would be someone like us, who is a dedicated social media agency like that’s all we do. Then, the third level up would be something like a full-stack, a full-service agency that kind of does it all. There are pros and cons to both, my style agency and then, the full stack style. Coming to work with someone like myself and many of my good friends, who also are in the Facebook space, we have to be friends because we need somebody to talk to like when the algorithm changes.
Doug Morneau: That’s funny.
Traci Reuter: Yeah, typically working, when you make that decision to bring someone into a partnership with you and that’s [inaudible 00:21:57] we’re looking for, as we want to partner with our clients. We want a long-term relationship. I always joke with people, “I’ve been married for almost 26 years, I like long-term relationships, so we usually are looking for something that we’re going to be together for a while.” In the beginning, it’s a lot.
It’s just like getting to know somebody. There’s a lot of back-and-forths, a lot of sharing information to try to really understand your brand and getting your voice right and understanding the kind of assets that we’re dealing with and really knowing that we know that we know that we know your company and your offering. That can just take some time. That takes a lot of effort. I mean relationships take effort. We usually take about a month. It’s kind of about a 30-day onboarding process. I know some of my peers do it much faster, but we have just proven for us that we need that longer period of time so that we can really build a long and wide runway to build, to be able to launch something really significant for our clients.
Doug Morneau: Now, so that’s the onboarding side. You’re 30 days to onboard, but what’s the pre-onboarding look like? Somebody is saying, “Hey, I’m interested,” what types of business like, do you have areas that you guys are experts in or …
Traci Reuter: Yeah, okay so like before that I mean usually what happens is we have a conversation and when somebody knows, like if you’re thinking about it, I recommend if you’re spending let’s say under $6,000 a month, somewhere under that you probably want to look at a freelancer because most agencies … That’s not enough ad spend for most agencies. Now, if they are smaller, up-and-coming agency, then maybe they’ll do that. I know I did in the beginning. Typically, [inaudible 00:23:40] $6,000 and above, some agencies will take that, others have different tiers of requirements. Usually, if you’re somewhere around there, you’re probably thinking to yourself, “All right, I need some help.” You’re probably having some success, but you know you could do better if you could have someone help you scale.
Usually, there’s a conversation. They’re supposed to be 30 minutes. I almost always go for an hour. My team jokes because I can’t help but-
Doug Morneau: But help, yeah.
Traci Reuter: … ask questions and give strategy and all that kind of stuff. Then, really [inaudible 00:24:11] discover like is this going to be a fit, are we going to be able to make an impact? Then, trying to really understand like what the objectives are, like what are your goals, what are your KPIs? Then, based on what we know is that going to be a good fit mutually because we are looking for partnerships. Then, in terms of specialty, I mean we’ve worked the gamut. The only thing I would say we’re not good at is we’re not good at the local businesses. Those are not our forte. I think there is a very special type of agency for that that are really good with local lead gen. For us, it’s been the e-commerce space, it’s been the webinar funnels for coaches, consultants, high ticket offers. Then, we’ve done really well with authors in the book space, traditionally published authors that have some kind of monetization on the backend, so someone that writes a best-selling book but has a master class that type of things.
Typically, I guess it would be either eCommerce or that coaching, consulting side of the world. For whatever reason, we’ve nailed those webinar funnels, we’ve nailed those high ticket application funnels. Then, eCommerce is also super fun because it’s just a fast-paced different kind of environment. My team prefers both of those.
Doug Morneau: What are some of the mistakes that clients make when they’re looking for an agency? Like you said, they’re spending 5,000, 6,000, 7,000, 8,000, 9,000, $10,000 a month advertising now. They’re going to go out to the marketplace. I guess you start with asking your peers, but what are the mistakes they make as they’re looking at agencies?
Traci Reuter: Well, I think some of it is an expectation. Some of the mistakes are like what are they expecting out of that. I think there is a desire to abdicate everything over to the agency to just be like, “I’m going to give it to you, it’s out of sight, out of mind.” Actually, we have a couple of clients that we achieved that but we didn’t start that way. I think if you go into the relationship, thinking that you’re just going to be able to wash your hands off it and the agency is going to take over, I think that you’re kind of setting both parties up for failure. That’s one thing and then, the other thing is … I’ve gotten really good at telling our prospects this when we’re getting ready to do business together is in the beginning, there is a lot of work that has to happen between the two parties. Sometimes, it’s creating a significant amount of content, of assets of images of videos. There are some agencies that do a lot of that creation in-house, but ultimately, it has to come from you as the business owner because I mean-
Doug Morneau: Yeah, you’re not going to be the spokesperson for them.
Traci Reuter: Exactly, so I think that’s definitely something that we see that makes the beginning stages of working together very rocky. If you’re going into looking for an agency, thinking, “They’re going to just do everything,” and you can walk away, I think you’re setting yourself up for frustration.
Doug Morneau: I think it’s a really good point. Yeah, I mean I’ve experienced that several times, abdicate control and then, you’ve got one person to blame when it doesn’t work that’s because you handed it off and just said, “You do it.”
Traci Reuter: Yeah, exactly. I mean don’t get me wrong. We do have a couple of clients as I said, we achieved that point, but it didn’t happen right away. I mean I’m thinking of one, in particular, we’ve been working with her for a couple of years now. We have a joke internally that she’s our absolute favorite client and part of it is because she really worked hard with us to make sure we understood her voice and her offers. She communicates early and often. She makes sure that we know two months in advance when a launch is coming. She knows how to work with us so that we can show up at our very, very best. That makes it really fun. We love those clients versus the one that’s like, “Oh, I’m going to do a live webinar tomorrow, can you get ads up three days ago?” “No, no, we can’t”
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SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
Social Media popularity does not equal profitability.
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Doug Morneau: That’s funny.
Traci Reuter: Gosh, it happens all the time, where, “It happens Friday at five o’clock, we want to do a live webinar on Tuesday, could you get ads up over the weekends?” It’s like, “Oh my goodness.”
Doug Morneau: That’s funny. Yeah, I [inaudible 00:28:13] that phone like you said on Thursday and go, “I need an email marketing campaign to go out Monday.” “Okay, so what Monday?” “Oh, in three days.” “Do you have content?” “No.” We need to find a writer, yeah, hire a writer, we need to do video, yeah okay. Then, we need to book the media and the media’s probably booked up for months in advance, like did you guys not think a month ago, two months ago? No. Good advice, I found that treating our suppliers like customers have always worked extremely well because like you said, it’s a two-way street. I mean the more I can do to serve you and to help your team understand my message and get back to you quickly and be responsive [inaudible 00:28:50] content, the better results I’m going to get. Yes, I expect you to do the heavy lifting and bring the strategy or your strategy, but listeners, I mean it’s your business, so roll your sleeves up and get in there.
Traci Reuter: Well, don’t you think, I mean I have come across a couple of dirtbags in the industry, but for the most part, everyone that I know, all of my peers, whether they’re on Facebook, social media, they’re in email marketing, most of us just really want to do an amazing job for our clients, we really, really do.
One of the things I’m constantly thinking of is what’s a win-win and how can we over-communicate with our clients, so that like the famous quote in Jerry Maguire, “Help me help you.” We’re just all trying to win here. That’s really what it is. We had a client once that was a little confrontational with us and one of my staff members said, “Look, we’re not interested in taking your money one time like this is something we want for the long haul.” We are very, very clear with that with our clients that we are trying to win together long term.
Doug Morneau: It makes sense. I think one of the other points you mentioned there are realistic expectations. You mentioned the dirtbags are the guys who aren’t the greatest people in the business. That’s been my experience is [inaudible 00:30:05] will say, “Oh yeah, we can get that done in a week.” Then, you send money and never hear from them again.
Traci Reuter: Oh, yeah.
Doug Morneau: To your point, sit on the money or run the ad yourself, but don’t sign up with somebody who says, “This is a seven-day project to riches and fame.”
Traci Reuter: Oh my gosh, yeah. That is something that is I’ve matured in my role and as our company is matured that’s something, where at first, I was a little bit nervous, like, “Gosh, what are people going to think when I tell them it’s a 30-day onboarding process.” I’ve actually got to a point, where I could be strong in my convictions that I know that I know that I know what’s in the best interest for these clients. I think I can convey that when we’re having our discovery call. Most of my clients now don’t even bat an eye and some of them are like, “Well, but we want our ads up next week.” I’m like, “You’re more than welcome to put them up next week, but we’re not interested in slapping up ads for you. We want to create a strategy that works for you long term.”
Doug Morneau: Can you sure one of the biggest successes you’ve had with a client? You can either name them or not name them.
Traci Reuter: I’ll give you two briefly. On the e-commerce side, the biggest success we’ve had is we’ve been working for the last four years with a very large client that works in the crafting space. One of their partners is Martha Stewart. They sell eCommerce and through Hobby Lobby and Joanns, all those kinds of craft spaces. We’ve done amazing things for them, grow them from $1,800 a month in ad spend to over a $100,000. One of the coolest things we’ve been able to do for them is every so often, they’re on Home Shopping Network. Ever since we’ve been working with them, we developed a methodology that they sell out in their 24-hour window. The first time we sold them out in 20 hours. The second time, we sold them out in nine hours. That’s been really, really fun what we’ve done with them. They’re a company called Cricut and that’s been a fun, fun client to work with.
Then, the other one on the coaching, consulting side of things is an amazing man by the name of Todd Herman. He is a performance mindset coach. We got to be behind his book launch, called The Alter Ego Effect and just absolutely incredible. He’s the one I mentioned earlier. We had four million views on his videos before the book launch. What we were able to do with that was just not only was it so much fun because he’s an amazing guy and Alter Ego is incredible, but some of it was just really breakthrough marketing that we were … He was willing to take a chance. We had some really innovative ideas. Those are always the time, where it’s both terrifying and exciting because you don’t know if it’s going to work and it really did with him. He has become a great friend and an amazing client.
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SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
Social Media popularity does not equal profitability.
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Doug Morneau: That’s really cool. I mean there’s nothing better than seeing a client hit a home run and then, stay with you as you help them build a business.
Traci Reuter: Yeah, it’s been really great. It’s been fun to see too because that book launched … We’re recording this in July, the book launched in February and it still rated number one in sports psychology and it’s in the top 10 for business consulting. It’s just been really, really great to see and it’s a movement. We get to be a part of how they make that happen.
Doug Morneau: Share with us one thing that you’re really excited about in the next six to 12 months. I mean your space is changing. The industry is changing. AI is everywhere, at least it seems to be everywhere as people are telling us. What are you most excited about?
Traci Reuter: Well, I think right now the thing I’m the most excited about is I’ve been really thinking through like how do we maintain and increase our value for our clients over the long haul. One thing that we’re doing is we are starting to take a step back and look at a bigger picture for our clients. I think because of my background in sales, I’ve always seen how traffic impacts the whole business, not just one aspect of it. We’re actually starting to invest in training the team on things like conversion rate optimization. We’re really trying to be able to … We’ve always consulted on sales funnels and things like that. We just don’t build them, but we’re trying to ratchet up our expertise because the more we can help our clients prosper and help their campaigns work, the better for everybody. That’s the thing I think the short term thing I’m the most excited about. Probably the second thing that is just I’m super excited about in general is the future of traffic and what that’s going to look. I’m paying close attention to trends. I’m watching things like LinkedIn that is starting to look and feel a little bit more like Facebook if you haven’t spent any time over there.
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SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
Social Media popularity does not equal profitability.
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Doug Morneau: Yeah, I have.
Traci Reuter: We’re watching those kinds of things just so that we can see like is this going to make sense? I still don’t think for the average business that LinkedIn paid advertising is really where it’s at, but I don’t see it staying that way for that much longer. I think we’ve got some exciting times ahead. I want to just say that as we tongue-in-cheek joke about Facebook and Instagram, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. I think it’s still a tremendous opportunity for most businesses.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, I agree. I published a book last year and it’s called Three Big Lies. It’s about email marketing and one of the lies is that email is dead. Yeah, it’s dead, doesn’t work, it’s like “Okay-
Traci Reuter: Sure.
Doug Morneau: … well, I should tell all my clients than because we’re still making money for them.” [inaudible 00:35:16] Facebook is old. They moved on to whatever the platform is, like, “Yeah, a shiny new object, but the reality is that has the lion’s share of the social media attention.”
Traci Reuter: Exactly.
Doug Morneau: What’s some of the bad advice that you hear? This is a Tim Ferriss question I stole from his last book. You’re out at a cocktail party and you’re listening to a conversation beside you about social advertising and what’s some of the bad advice you just cringe when you hear it?
Traci Reuter: I love that you asked me that because recently I was … I’m in a mastermind and I was watching a video recording and a very, very high profile marketer, who does not actually market. I mean [inaudible 00:35:57] probably an oxymoron. He’s very well-known in the digital marketing space in the leadership capacity. I heard him do a 10-minute talk on using, including third world countries to help get more social media proof on your posts and to increase your followers. Essentially was bragging that he’s got over a million followers because of this strategy. I had everything I could do to not throw my computer.
Doug Morneau: I know what you’re talking about.
Traci Reuter: I just don’t want to name names because I don’t think that’s necessary, but I wanted to take my computer and throw it across the room because it is dangerous, it is irresponsible, it is the worst advice you could possibly get. There was a time that people were doing that kind of thing, trying to game the system to get lots of followers from Sri Lanka and Pakistan and all those places. You should do that if that’s where your ideal client is. You should never do that if your ideal client is not in that place because, in the long run, it will kill your account, it will hurt your advertising score, it will cost you more money. It’s the worst advice I have heard in ages. It makes me sick to my stomach that someone of that caliber was recently speaking about that. Sorry, I mean it was a loaded question. I had no idea you’re going to ask that.
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SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
Social Media popularity does not equal profitability.
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Doug Morneau: Well and I didn’t know how you’re going to answer it either. I mean that’s why we have these conversations. I’m just smiling here politely because I’m Canadian, so I’m being polite. I’m just not going to respond other than I … Yeah, I’m very familiar, I’ve heard the same conversation.
Traci Reuter: Yes.
Doug Morneau: You brought up another point. Let’s say you’ve been running some social ads and you’ve made some mistakes. I’ve been involved in ad campaigns. We’ve had Google accounts banned. We’ve had Facebook accounts banned, not because of horrifically bad things, but “Hey that picture of that lady standing on the scales is offensive.” It’s like, “Why, she’s fully clothed.” “Well, it offends people, so we’re suspending your ad,” or you have gone to Sri Lanka to get followers. How do you clean that up? Is that possible or is it a start over?
Traci Reuter: Well, for the most part, I mean unless it’s been so egregious that they shut you down, it is possible to recover from that. It is definitely challenging. There’s something that every one that is in the Facebook, Instagram advertising space knows and there’s something called an invisible advertiser score. No one exactly knows how it’s calculated or where to find it, but there are all these different things that contribute to the algorithm to how Facebook treats your account. Some of it is … Number one, it is the advertiser’s responsibility to understand and stay on top of Facebook’s Terms of Service. Whether you’re doing it yourself-
Doug Morneau: That’s funny.
Traci Reuter: … or you’re hiring somebody, you have to know because it’s there. It’s kind of that zero-tolerance approach. That’s kind of the first thing. The second thing is and I think I’ve done a couple of videos about this is just really becoming a good citizen on the platform. Ultimately, Facebook makes all of its money from advertisers. We’re the reason they stay in business, but the only way we have anything valuable to advertise to is if the end-user experience is positive. Be thinking that way, how can you be adding value to Facebook’s ecosystem? If you can take the approach of, “I’m going to be a good citizen, I’m going to know the rules, I’m going to know that …” Different parts of the world have different rules and if you go to a country and you don’t know the rules, but you break one, you still are liable for that.
Doug Morneau: Sure, you are, yeah.
Traci Reuter: Yeah, it’s the same way in social media. I think if you are in a very difficult situation, then you have to understand that it’s a hole that you have to climb your way out of and it’s possible. Sometimes, if it’s really bad, then yeah it is a start-over game. Sometimes, if it’s bad enough, you can’t even do that. Like right now, one of the big things … I do a lot of work in natural product space. I live outside of Denver and natural products are a big thing here. One of the things is CBD and hemp. There’s a lot of companies, they are getting shut down because they have hemp seed in their product. There’s nothing you can do about it. You’ve got to follow the rules because it’s Facebook’s game and we’re just playing in it.
Doug Morneau: Yup, I hear you. That’s [inaudible 00:40:11] for me in the email space, but that’s another topic. I think is it your video that’s How to Avoid Being an Icky Advertiser, is that the one you’re referring to?
Traci Reuter: Well, I think that’s one of them. I have to remember what, one or the other. I put a video out every single Tuesday, so the icky advertiser came from an event I was at that everyone is like, “Like Facebook Ads, everybody hates them.” It’s like, “Well, they hate them because people need to step up their game.”
Doug Morneau: I hate everybody. That’s [inaudible 00:40:39]. You’re [inaudible 00:40:40]. You’re obviously not my audience, so thank you for your comment, let’s move along.
Traci Reuter: That’s right.
Doug Morneau: Who’s one guest I absolutely have to have on my podcast?
Traci Reuter: Absolutely have to have, oh gosh, if you could get my client Todd Herman, if you could get Todd on your podcast, Todd is amazing. He would absolutely knock your listeners’ socks off for sure about that especially earlier when I talked about having the right mindset, the long-term game, Todd, he’s a brilliant man. Your listeners would love him.
Doug Morneau: Okay, so I made a note of that and ask you if you can to make an introduction.
Traci Reuter: Be happy to.
Doug Morneau: Then, where can people find you? You’re running an agency and you’re a busy, busy, busy person, online, offline. Where’s the best place to track you down?
Traci Reuter: Well, we put together a special page for the Real Marketing Real Fast listeners. If you want to go to divinesocial.com/rmrf, what I’ve got there for you is every way you can reach me on every social channel, but also I got a free mini-class. It’s a 15-minute video and some worksheets. It’s designed to help you build out the beginnings of a good social media advertising strategy. You don’t need to have a strategy session with my agency or anything like that. You can take the same principles that we’ve done for Todd and for Cricut and for some of our other clients and be able to start crafting that out for yourself. Really, it comes from several years and several million dollars’ worths of testing.
Doug Morneau: Well that’s the other thing I want to mention [inaudible 00:42:13] mention just before we wind up today and that is that the advantage of working with an agency or working with someone like yourself, you’ve spent tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising opposed to little [inaudible 00:42:25], if I’m sitting in my corner, trying to do it myself and I’ve got a $500 a day budget, I don’t have that experience. Leveraging your millions of dollars of ad buy is a huge advantage to people who are going to learn by making mistakes.
Traci Reuter: Well, there’s that and the other piece that I think it was Todd is the one that like helped me to see this as a selling point for myself is that not just the ad spend and the experience and the knowledge and the wisdom we’ve gained, but because we’re working across different industries and different kinds of businesses, we are gleaning these little nuggets of wisdom that can be altered for different companies. There is a huge advantage by being able to take all of that different experience, not just the knowledge and the wisdom, but we have insight into so many different types of companies that it’s so helpful for our clients that we can bring that to the table. A lot of times, there are confidentiality, but we can’t always say who it came from-
Doug Morneau: Sure.
Traci Reuter: … but we can share those strategies and find ways to adapt them to our other clients and that’s huge.
Doug Morneau: That’s amazing. I want to say thanks so much for taking time today and just being so generous with the information you shared.
Traci Reuter: Well, it’s been so much fun, Doug. I really enjoyed it. Sounds like you and I are very much in simpatico in our thoughts on some of the marketing tactics and strategies. Thanks for having me. It’s been really fun.
Doug Morneau: Well, thanks again. I love the fact that you’ve got a sales background. A lot of times, you work with people who don’t have any of the sales backgrounds. They understand all the tactic stuff, but at the end of the day, you need to generate a sale to pay for all the tactic stuff. It’s good to have someone-
Traci Reuter: That’s right.
Doug Morneau: … who understands that. There we go. This is another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. I hope you enjoyed this episode in the introduction of what it might look like if you work with somebody that’s got deep expertise in the paid social media space or an agency. I want to say thank you to Traci for being my guest. I want to suggest to you that go over to the podcast once it’s been published and leave a comment, leave a question. Make sure you reach out to her on the social page. I’ll make sure the links are in the show notes, so thanks again for listening. I look forward to serving you on our next episode.
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SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PROFITABILITY
Social Media popularity does not equal profitability.
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Special Offer: Free mini-class from Traci. See divinesocial.com/rmrf
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Get in touch with Traci:
- Website – Divine Social
Find out more about Traci:
- Traci on Facebook
- Traci on Instagram
- Traci on Twitter
- Podcast: Social Media Marketing Happy Hour
Links to other related podcasts and or blog posts:
SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS FOR CREATIVE ENTREPRENEURS
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING CREATES CHOCOLATE SUCCESS