Marketing Overwhelm in Small Business

Speaker 1 0:00

I see it all the time with small businesses is they feel like they need to do all the things on all the channels at all of the time .

Speaker 1 0:06

And all of a sudden , and they're , you know , on multiple platforms and they don't have proper tracking set up , and then they don't know what's actually working and not working , so they just keep doing all of the things , and so that's what leads to overwhelm and burnout and the idea that marketing doesn't work . I've heard that over the years as well , and so you know . My argument is marketing does work and it doesn't have to be overwhelming if you're willing to take a step back and outline , like what is your business strategy , what are you ultimately trying to accomplish as a business , and then outline what's your marketing strategy based on those business goals .

Speaker 2 0:53

Well , welcome everybody back to another episode of Connect , Inspire , Create , and we are here just to give you a little bit of encouragement , inspiration and just learn some new things and discover new things from the people that you listen to . That are my guests and , as always , I want to encourage you to lead with heart and authenticity . So , thank you for listening to our show today and welcome , Sarah . Thanks for joining me . Thank you so much for having me on the show , Carol . I'm excited to be here . So let me tell you just a little bit about Sarah . Sarah is the CEO of DuckTab Marketing and since her start in December 2010 , and we have a little story to share about that she has consulted and advised thousands of small business owners on how to build , grow and scale a profitable business . She has a passion for helping small business owners focus on their zone of genius and build a team around them to support their growth goals . The area of work , Sarah , that you share that lights you up most is training .

Speaker 2 1:58

So whether you're training , a new team member , a long-term client or a new group of fractional CMOs ? That's your happy space . I believe that is All right , wonderful . So not only am I thrilled to be talking to Sarah today , but there was a coincidental connection when Sarah and I met on Podmatch , which is where most of my guests I find them there on Podmatch . I happen to love that platform . It has served me really well over the last three years . But I actually started following duct tape marketing in 2010 , and that is when you joined as an intern . I have to say I'm going to share . I still have my copy , which was published in 2010 , of Referral Engine by John Yance , so it feels like full circle coming back to chat to you now as the CEO . So tell me a little bit more about that wonderful journey of when you started as an intern in 2010 and look where you are today .

Speaker 1 3:01

Yeah , I love that story . Thanks for sharing it . It's great that we've been both of us been following or part of duct tape marketing for kind of the same timeframe over the years , so I love that . So I started at duct tape marketing , as you said , as an intern back in December 2010 . And at that point , I really didn't know a ton about marketing or business .

Speaker 1 3:22

I had a lot to learn , as most interns do , and so started as the intern role , really fell in love with what we were doing at Duct Tape Marketing , with our mission to serve small businesses and really make marketing as practical and easy to understand as possible . And so , after my intern time , I moved into community manager and I was account manager for our clients . I was fractional account manager for our clients , I was fractional CMO for our clients , I was COO at Duct Tape Marketing , I was running our sales and now , finally , in December of last year , I moved into the CEO seat , and so it's been a quite a journey of learning and experimenting and growing over the years , but I think the fact that I've played so many different roles within our company it's ultimately allowed me to be a better leader today to the people that I manage .

Speaker 2 4:14

I know that was going to be . One of my questions was wearing so many different hats . What a wonderful opportunity , because I think that does , as I said , puts you in such a supportive role to understand different challenges and different departments , because you've touched on each of them .

Speaker 1 4:31

Yeah , absolutely , and one of the things that we do as well is we certify and train marketing consultants , agencies , fractional CMOs and a lot of people that are joining that program .

Speaker 1 4:43

We have established members that join , but we also have a lot of people that are in startup mode and so maybe they have 15 years of experience being a CMO at a company and they're leaving for the first time to become a fractional CMO , and so they're entering this business and oftentimes they're going to have to play all of those roles for a long time until they're really able to bring in a support system around them .

Speaker 1 5:05

So that experience has also helped me train that audience as well roles for a long time until they're really able to bring in a support system around them . So that experience has also helped me train that audience as well , because I know what it's like to feel like you're never going to be in sales and then all of a sudden have to learn how to be comfortable in sales and then eventually learn to love sales . Like I've gone through that transformation myself , and so when someone comes to our program and they're like I love marketing , but now I have to sell because I own this business , I'm able to support them on . You know the mindset work that goes into making that transition from being , you know , scared or thinking you're not going to be good at sales , to eventually , one day , learning to love it .

Speaker 2 5:39

Oh , that's . Yeah , I think that just is it's . It's an absolute gem to be able to have that background . You talk about small businesses . They should own and not rent their marketing . Can you explain that a little bit more for us ?

Speaker 1 5:54

Of course , I actually have a new book coming out . It's my first book . I don't know when this podcast episode will go live , but it's coming out August 13th and it's called Unchained Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models , and it's exactly on that concept of owning versus renting your marketing . So a little bit of a backstory . We've been a marketing agency for 31 years at this point where we've served clients over those years , like handling , strategy and execution , but most recently , in the last six or so months ago , we've shifted to what we're calling a little bit more of a anti-agency model . So we're not bashing agencies , we are . We've been one , we've always been one .

Speaker 1 6:34

But you know , with the evolution of AI , I think small businesses finally have the opportunity to bring some of the marketing execution in-house , and so that's a lot of what we're doing with the own versus rent your marketing . We're coming in for our clients . We're still serving as a strategic leader , as like a fractional CMO , where we're creating the marketing strategy , but then we're analyzing their internal team and up-leveling their internal team by building AI systems below them to help with execution . And so there's a lot of challenges when small businesses just outsource their marketing .

Speaker 1 7:11

Again , I've been selling to small businesses for quite some time now , and I've heard so many horror stories over the years . And again , it's not that agencies are bad or wrong . They're a great solution for clients in the right situation . But I think what small business owners need is they need more clarity and confidence in their marketing , because there's a lot of confusion in the space , and so when we can come in and map out the strategy , map out the team strategy and then elevate internal teams , it really gives them a lot more sense of control over what's actually being done from a marketing perspective .

Speaker 2 7:47

I love that , just that thought that you've got this big vision board and you have it laid out for you . Now let's just step in and learn how to take control and do the work and I'm going to come back to the AI part . But I'd love to ask you , with my listeners often being in small businesses , feeling overwhelmed and just burnt out and going I need to do all the marketing and I don't know what I'm doing . You know , what are some signs that they basically are just sinking and not building a solid foundation ?

Speaker 1 8:17

Yeah , I see it all the time with small businesses is they feel like they need to do all the things on all the channels at all of the time .

Speaker 1 8:24

And all of a sudden and they're , you know , on multiple platforms and they don't have proper tracking set up , and then they don't know what's actually working and not working , so they just keep

Sarah's Journey from Intern to CEO

Speaker 1 8:33

doing all of the things , and so that's what leads to overwhelm and burnout and the idea that marketing doesn't work . I've heard that over the years as well , and so you know my argument is marketing does work and it doesn't have to be overwhelming if you're willing to take a step back and outline , like , what is your business strategy , what are you ultimately trying to accomplish as a business , and then outline what's your marketing strategy based on those business goals Like , basically , how are we going to get there ? And then take some time analyzing your team structure . That's something we call our business or our marketing strategy pyramid , and when you're thinking about marketing strategy , that means so many different things to so many different people . But , to simplify it , what we think about is what are you currently doing ? So a bit of an audit on the front end , and then we do a bunch of research to create ideal client personas and messaging that resonates with them , because you need to know who you're targeting with what message before you can even think channels , and then we map out what's the customer journey look like .

Speaker 1 9:36

We have our own version called the marketing hourglass .

Speaker 1 9:39

So how can people get to know like trust , try , buy , repeat and refer you ? And then you can think about okay , what channels are we going to be on to fill those steps in the marketing hourglass journey ? And then you can put it into an execution calendar from there . But then when you do all of that , it's important to identify okay , what metrics are we going to track to determine if these things are successful or not ? And so that's how we always start with clients is mapping out a comprehensive marketing strategy that maps out three months worth of execution calendar , and then every three months you should do a bit of a quarterly strategic planning where again you're coming back to what's the business trying to accomplish ? Okay , what are the priorities from a marketing perspective to get us there ? What are we going to track ? And working kind of in those sprints throughout the year is a really good way to take a step back , to create a plan that you can then follow , which feels a lot less overwhelming than just doing all of the things .

Speaker 2 10:39

Yeah , no , I'm hearing you when you say that and just going number one all platforms don't work for all people . And if you haven't done the work that you're talking , say that and just going number one all platforms don't work for all people . And if you haven't done the work that you're talking about doing ahead of time , you have no idea . And so there is . You're not measuring anything , You're just kind of flying in the dark in a certain way . But the other thing I think that's important is to stay with something for a period of time , because you can't just test something for one month or whatever and go well , that's not working for me . So now I better be here and I better be there , but being consistent , um yep , and showing up , um , yeah , that's exactly right .

Speaker 1 11:16

Yeah , that's exactly right , and I think the quarterly committing to certain things for a three months or a quarter is a good amount of time . You know , I've heard the years like when we've launched meta ads for clients . You know , 15 days and it's not working . And we're still in learning phase . Like it will . Like we have to test , we have to optimize , we have to tweak , we have to figure out what graphics and wordings , and so it's a process , and so a lot of times , marketing efforts take time , but if you put the time in on the front end , it will pay off in the long run . Seo is another example . Like that takes time to get it right in the front end , but it will pay off in the long run , and so patience is really important in marketing in certain areas , but also being patient , but also paying attention to the metrics and tracking .

Speaker 1 12:05

Because on the other side of things , you know we work with a lot of home service type of companies as our clients and a lot of them like remodeler contractors and HVAC contractors , and they'll say you know , we've been sending out direct mailers for years and we just keep doing it because we should . And then I'll say great , what's your tracking ? Look like no-transcript perspective . You could even start there just by saying are we getting results from this ? If we don't know , what tracking should we put in place and what's a success metric that will tell us if we should continue doing this or not ? And so you could do a bit of a mini audit on your initiatives , and if you can't answer yes to those questions , then it might not be worth pursuing any further .

Speaker 2 13:17

And that's a service that you offer to your clients , Because I always find that people get overwhelmed with tracking and if they're not analytically minded , they go .

Speaker 1 13:24

Yeah , I just do it by feel politically minded , they go yeah , I just do it by feel , yeah , yeah , yeah . And I think there's two sides I've seen in the small business space either people overtrack and they obsess over everything , or they just kind of stay away from it because they don't really know where to look . And I think there's a bit of a happy medium . And so we set up tracking for all of our clients as part of our retainers . That we're working on .

Speaker 1 13:46

But if you're not working with anyone and you're interested in pursuing this in our company , one of the things that we follow is we have a North Star spreadsheet that basically then is broken up by each of our key divisions , so marketing and sales and customer service and finance and all the areas , and then my team leads for each of those divisions , fills out the spreadsheet , all the areas , and then my team leads for each of those divisions , fills out the spreadsheet every single week and then I meet with them one-on-one and we talk about these metrics and so , under marketing , it's like the most important metrics

Owning vs Renting Your Marketing

Speaker 1 14:16

that I need to know in order to understand if our marketing is on track or not , same with sales and other areas .

Speaker 1 14:24

And so if those very high level important metrics are off . That then tells us that I need to go deeper into the more detailed tracking with the team to understand , like , where are things falling apart ? And so it's a manual process that we do with this spreadsheet , but we do that by choice . It causes my team to go out and actually analyze and put the numbers in and think about them , and then when we have a conversation , it's you know , what is this number telling us ? Why are we behind ?

Speaker 1 14:53

What's the plan to get back on track type of conversation versus , you know me necessarily having to have all the answers and so having something as simple as a Google sheet or an Excel spreadsheet whatever you use , identifying what are your most important metrics for each of your departments and then looking at those on a very high level on a weekly basis feels a lot over or less overwhelming than if I was looking at because we run ad campaigns for our own business and so if I was looking at all of those detailed metrics every single week like it's overwhelming for me because that's not my main priority in my role . So if I can see the most important metrics to those ad campaigns , that's enough information for me to be able to continue to make sure we're on track and lead Right .

Speaker 2 15:39

Like a bird's eye view kind of bringing it in and then you can decide where to go . Yeah , absolutely .

Speaker 1 15:46

And then you can decide where to go yeah absolutely , yeah , yeah , absolutely . I talk about it as like mountaintop metrics . So you're staying up on the peak and determining if you need to go down into the valley .

Speaker 2 15:55

If you've got a club down Right exactly , you live in a beautiful place . If I remember , You're out in the mountains in Boise .

Speaker 1 16:04

Yes , so foothills are right behind my house back here , so I'm able to walk most days with my lab and it's a beautiful place .

Speaker 2 16:12

I know I've spent a little bit of time there and just being on the river and walking around the river Absolutely gorgeous , yeah , lovely place to be . Yes , a question that so many people have and I heard you mentioned I said it come back to it is AI . So I would just love to know how are you incorporating AI into your client systems without sort of and everybody's always up against this , you know bringing , keeping the human touch there . I'm a big fan of it . I love how you know everything that it can help people with , but how are you incorporating AI into your cloud systems ?

Speaker 1 16:51

Of course . So we've been leaning into AI in a big way , not to replace our team , but to elevate them , and so that's how I talk about AI to our team and to our clients as well , and so one of the packages that we've always offered I kind of talked on it a little bit earlier is something called Strategy . First , it's initial 30 to 45 day engagement .

Speaker 1 17:12

Before the evolution of AI , my team was going out there and manually creating the slide decks , manually doing the research , and it was just this tedious , time-consuming process of , like , analyzing data and creating slides , and so that's where a lot of their time was spent .

Speaker 1 17:29

We've now brought in AI solutions to help us create the initial slide decks and also do a lot of heavy lifting of the tedious research time , thinking like humans , understanding the big picture , being empathetic , being authentic , understanding the client tone of voice and ideal clients and all of the things that are so important , and so it's freed up their space from the in the weeds work to more overseeing that work , so then they can do more human work . And so that's how I think about AI , and that's just an example in strategy , but we also use AI , you know , in a lot of marketing execution as well as the way the world is going . Absolutely search um to assist with , you know , initial outlines and copy creation , but they give it all of the information and input on the front end . They use ai for first drafts and all that good stuff .

Speaker 2 18:32

Then they completely tweak it , edit it on the back end and so it's always human , ai , human um , is the way that kind of thing , yeah , the sandwich effect , if my listeners , many of them , happen to be solopreneurs what would you suggest as a good way to step back and saying , like , what are we actually trying to accomplish strategically ?

Speaker 1 18:56

and then bringing in AI was write down all of the things that they're doing on a consistent basis all the skills they're using , all the repeatable tasks , and then basically rank those as human-needed or AI-assisted or AI-first and then basically analyze , like are there AI systems and tools that we could bring in for some of the AI system or AI-first things that then would allow them to focus on more of their human elements in their position ?

Speaker 1 19:52

And so I think that's a really good way to think about it is doing an audit , if you're a solopreneur , doing an audit of your time and analyze , like , what are the things that are growing in importance and what are the things that are maybe decreasing in value a little bit because of AI , and then trying to save some time by bringing in AI solutions for those decreasing in value things .

Speaker 1 20:10

So you can spend more time on those things increasing in value . So for me , like when I was analyzing my time originally , like going out and speaking more and having sales conversations and thinking strategically and those things are what I identified are . I think people want that human connection more and more .

Speaker 1 20:29

So those are a lot of times where I'm spending my time these days where you know before I was writing all of my LinkedIn content from scratch , and I'm by no means just putting out generic LinkedIn slides , but I'm using LinkedIn to help me with content creation . I'm using sorry ChatGPT , or Ella is another tool that I use to help with content creation , because it is easier to do that more efficiently today .

Speaker 2 20:55

So and then , sarah , you know , as you were sharing that as well , it's got to correlate as well with your sort of zones of passion and genius , because why , you know , if you , as you said earlier , we spoke about training and how that lights you up and that's , that's your area , why you know , then stay with that um and take those other areas and , and let's you know , check gpt , support you or whatever other ai tool that you , you choose to use , that um , yeah , so I mean that's actually this that was actually the second part of the exercise we went through as a team .

Speaker 1 21:30

I didn't go all the way through it , but we then highlighted you know what lights you up , what do you love doing ? And then also , where are you actually making the impact for the company or for your clients

Creating a Strategic Marketing Plan

Speaker 1 21:46

further from the initial list they created ? And then we actually had people write their future bios based on where they are growing into with the evolution of AI , because a lot of what we're talking about as a company is how can we future-proof duct tape marketing in the agency space moving forward , and so we're making a lot of shifts company-wide , but I'm also trying to pay attention to how can I future-proof my team and help them evolve and grow . So , regardless if they're with Duct Tape Marketing or anyone in the future , they're building the right skills in the world that's coming out in front of us right now .

Speaker 2 22:16

That's fantastic . I just wanted to touch on this one question . Is there a piece of outdated advice in marketing that you wish people just stopped listening to ?

Speaker 1 22:28

Well , I mean , I think the big one we touched on earlier is that you need to be on all channels and doing all the things . That's a big one . But also , seo is changing so rapidly right now , and pretty much how we used to approach SEO a year ago , six months ago , to where it is today is completely different because it's made such major shifts , and so if you're still doing what you've always done from an SEO perspective , it's time to start focusing on different ways of approaching SEO in the future as well .

Speaker 2 23:01

Right , yeah , no so important . And I think , yeah , things have changed and they're changing so rapidly , with AI assisting us , that I even saw somebody write a blog post the other day about how you know SEO , because of AI , is no longer the main thing to be looking at , and that was like . I still think that there are keywords and things that matter in that world .

Speaker 1 23:25

Yeah , and people are still using like Google search , but really a big focus of it is because even in Google you'll see like AI summaries at the top and so it's .

Speaker 2 23:34

How can you ?

Speaker 1 23:35

get into those AI summaries and how can you get into the LLMs that people are using to search as well , and so a lot of that is , instead of just focusing on , like , specific keywords , a lot of it is answering questions that people are out there asking , because then you'll be shown as a resource and so , like it's still important to focus on . You know SEO as a tactic , but it's just completely shifted the approach to how we're addressing , seo . Yeah , wow .

Speaker 2 24:05

So interesting . This conversation has been wonderful . So thank you for sharing and I'm excited about your book that's coming out and I think we'll be pretty close to that . So I want to make sure that I have a link to get your access to your book and , of course , I'll put in the website for Duct Tape Marketing . Is there anywhere else ? That is a good idea for people to find you or find out more about what the company offers .

Speaker 1 24:33

Yeah , absolutely Our website . As you said , duct Tape Marketing . The book will be a great starting point . When that's live , you can actually already pre-order , so I'll send you the link to that .

Speaker 2 24:40

Oh good , Love it yeah .

Speaker 1 24:42

And then LinkedIn . I'm very active on LinkedIn as well , so again , my name is just Sarah Ney and you can find me there Super .

Speaker 2 24:49

Sarah , I'll make sure to have all those links no-transcript .

Speaker 1 24:59

I would say if you're feeling overwhelmed , you're not alone . Right now A lot of people are feeling overwhelmed . I've been in this space for a while now and I'm feeling overwhelmed right now in marketing because it's just changing and trying to accomplish . And then you know , start with four or six biggest group of growth priorities and work on those over the next quarter , and so that will help you stay focused and hopefully less overwhelmed with everything that's happening .

Speaker 2 25:36

Yeah , Now , as you share that , I'm just thinking it comes back to baby steps . We hear that so often is , but let's just condense a little and let go and then sort of and also having joy . You know there's got to be an element of passion and joy in marketing . I love marketing and I mean there are this it is so wonderful , when it works well , to see that ripple effect go out . So , yeah , don't forget to find the joy and passion in it all right , Exactly , and focus on the areas too that light you up . And so , if you don't forget to find the joy and passion in it , all right .

Speaker 1 26:04

Exactly , and focus on the areas , too , that light you up . And so if you love being on video and if you love talking to people and if you love podcasting , like lean into that as well , because if you hate all those things and you try to force yourself into it , it's going to make you dread . So you know , not only analyze , like what makes sense for the company from a priority standpoint , but also to you as your point , what brings you joy , what lights you up , what makes you excited to to be at work , to focus on as well .

Speaker 2 26:31

Yeah , so important , wonderful . Sarah . Thank you for your time . Thanks for sharing with my listeners today and it was wonderful to have you as a guest . Thanks for having me on . Thanks for listening . If our conversation sparked some inspiration for you , I invite you to share this episode with others . And I do encourage you to embrace your own unique way of connecting , inspiring and creating this week Hence the name of the show Connect , inspire , create .

Speaker 2 26:59

So let your choices in your business and your life bring you a sense of ease and flow into your world . And if you are looking for tools to build powerful habits around a lifelong positive mindset , then I'd love to explore what results youlife to find balance in not only their business endeavors but also to help prepare the foundation for a positive mindset . And by blending personal accountability and mindset coaching with the powerful positive intelligence program that I use , you will gain lifelong tools to create a shift in all areas of your life , from personal to professional , and reduce that negative self-talk and discover more self-love . So feel free to reach out if you have any questions for me , and I am here to support you on that journey . You can connect no-transcript

AI as a Tool to Elevate Teams

Speaker 2 44:01

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Speaker 2 44:01

If our conversation sparked some inspiration for you , I invite you to share this episode with others , and I do encourage you to embrace your own unique way of sense of ease and flow into your world . And if you are looking for tools to build powerful habits around a lifelong positive mindset , then I'd love to explore what results you are looking for in your life and your business . As a mindset and accountability coach , I work with women business owners in midlife to find balance in not only their business endeavors , but also to help prepare the foundation for a positive mindset . And by blending personal accountability and mindset coaching with the powerful positive intelligence program that I use , you will gain lifelong tools to create a shift in all areas of your life , from personal to professional , and reduce that negative self-talk and discover more self-love . So feel free to reach out if you have any questions for me , and I am here to support you on that journey . You can connect with me on LinkedIn at Carol Clegg . You'll find me there , or look for my website , carolcleggcom . So until the next time .