Suzanne Chadwick
Hey, hey, lovelies, welcome back to the podcast, very excited to have you here. I've got a guest episode today. I feel like I haven't had that many guests lately, which is okay, as well, because you know, I've got a lot to tell ya. But I'm excited to have one of my beautiful clients, Marianne, Amy's on the podcast today. She works with CEOs to help you have a better digital acumen, you know what that means? It means that you know what's going on with your digital marketing, you understand the decisions that you're making you understand how to measure what's working and what's not. And so this is a conversation that I think is very important for us to have. So make sure that you tune in, you get all the goodness, you go and check her out on socials as well. Because in this episode, we are going to be talking about the things to be aware of as to what's happening in the market, what you need to know now how you can be on top of it and make really great decisions. So this is also, you know, if you're hiring somebody, if you've outsourced any of your digital marketing, how to make better decisions, and really be the CEO who knows what is going on. I always remember somebody saying to me, when it came to Facebook ads just know enough to be dangerous, which which means know enough so that when you're hiring people, or you're working with people, even if you're not doing it yourself, you're competent enough to be able to ask the right questions. And so obviously, our entire businesses are based on digital marketing, understanding traffic to our website, paid organic, all the rest of it. And so this is such an important conversation for us to have. And if it's not something that you have spent time on, then I'm going to call it out and say this is something you need to know. So without further ado, let's dive in. Marianne, welcome to the brandbuilders Lab podcast.

MaryAnne Aimes
Hi, Suz, thanks so much for having me.

Suzanne Chadwick
My pleasure, I'm looking forward to this conversation, because I do like to know what's going on in the market and what I need to know about and how I'm gonna make all the decisions when it comes to the world of digital marketing. And so I know that that's what you help people do. So for those of my audience who don't know yet, can you just give us a little bit about you and who you are and what you do?

MaryAnne Aimes
And yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I like to think of myself as a digital marketing veteran, both based on my age, and up to about, I think it's 13 years this year, in digital marketing. And, you know, going all in on digital marketing, after having a corporate career in marketing, in some ways, it was like a whole career pivot, like it was, you know, it's quite different to the kind of brand marketing work, I, I own a digital marketing agency called BICEP marketing that I started back in 2010. Obviously, starting as a freelancer, like we all do, and was able to really, I guess, maximize digital marketing for really small businesses. And then that propelled an agency model forward. And we now work with lots of small to medium businesses, and we support them across the whole digital suite. So as I said, I've been I've been in Facebook since cat means, you know, ruled the world and and Instagram didn't exist. And now I guess for myself, I'm really focusing my I guess, expertise into working with CEOs and mentoring them to understand what I see as digital acumen, you know, we can read a p&l, or we know we need to, but we don't necessarily go and read those analytics, or someone's managing our digital, but we don't actually know how it's performing, or we don't know how to know, you know, they give us reports, but we don't know what they mean. So I'm really about upskilling, business owners and CEOs to really take back control and, you know, feel confident in their digital marketing, even if they're not the ones doing it.

Suzanne Chadwick
Yeah, I love that. Because I do think I do think what what I hear from clients all the time is they want to do ads, or they just want to understand like, how do I know? Like, how many people are coming to my website and my sales page is even converting and I want to do an ad do I need to spend 1000s of dollars and how does that even work? And so I think that even though it's been around for a really long time, I think that there's still a lot of confusion around it. So I think that it's so important just like it's important for us to manage our money and for us to have, you know, really great products and services, I think that you can't really run a business today without having that digital acumen as well. Yeah, 100% Yes, so good. So we're gonna dive into it today. And I want to know all about the how, who, what, where, when. So, that's what we're gonna do. And so what do we need to know, right now? Do you think we're recording this in 2023? What's happening in the market? And where do we need to be focusing our attention?

MaryAnne Aimes
Yeah, absolutely. I think the market right now is really different to where we were 12 months ago, and obviously, 12 months before that. And that's not to, you know, that's not untypical, obviously, every year. What is obviously untypical is we lived through a pandemic, and that as much as you know, it's nice to not talk about it anymore, and just move on with our lives, it has had a huge impact on the consumer. And you know, certainly in the Australian market, right now, we're moving into a potential, you know, recession, whether that happens, or whether it doesn't depends on which expert you follow, but the consumer is in a really different place to where they were last year with, I guess, sort of post COVID optimism. And the year before where it was really about treat myself, you know, how am I going to make myself happy? How am I going to survive, I'm going to shop I'm going to buy and, you know, in some ways, we had different amounts of free time. So I think right now, a lot of what I'm seeing changing in digital is in response to what's changing with the consumer, and certainly anyone that follows me or goes on to follow me will know, I'm always about who are you talking to. So who's your ideal clients, so everything I talk about for business owners is, first of all, understanding who you're marketing to. So when we think about what's changing, we need to look at who we're marketing to, and what their evolution is, as well. So what we I guess, to kick off have been seeing a change in and more in a calm, but it certainly goes across the courses and you know, digital products, is that Facebook revenue that we all rode in 2020 and 2021 is really backing down, we're not seeing that. And again, you know, to put some jargon out there that are Oh, A S, so return on actual spend. So when I'm putting $1 to Facebook, what do I make, you know, definitely during the height of COVID, the right businesses were able to, you know, five times or 10 times that dollar, because the consumer had time, they had perceptual access income. And we were you know, we were trying to bolster our happiness, whereas now we've seen that really back down, and we're not seeing that direct dollar conversion, so immediate from Facebook. And I think, again, that that's got to do with the consumer journey. What we are seeing though, is it might just be that it's a longer process to conversion. So the last click might not be happening in Facebook. So then your tools aren't telling you Facebook delivered the money. We're seeing things like, you know, people might experience your ad, and then days later, they might Google you, and then they may find your website, and then they may convert or they may save something and then come back to it. So it's a bit more of a considered, you know, some of that impulse, I think has has moved away. And that really then spreads through to our lead gen strategies. Again, I think, even pre COVID, that free challenge the the free webinar, the mini course, they were quite a strong lead gentle, especially to push through ads, where you could get you know, 100 signups to your free five day challenge. People sort of thirsty, thirsty for knowledge thirsty for a development, what we're seeing in the the consumer model right now, there just doesn't seem to be that same volume coming through. And again, I look to the consumer, what's changed with the consumer life is really back to normal. You know, many people have returned to the office who are working from home, those that still working from home, I think have more pressure now to justify that working from home is as efficient as the office model. So I think where, you know, people had a bit more time, you know, we weren't going out on the weekends, we didn't have kids sport to ferry to all those sorts of, you know, things that make life just feel a bit overwhelming. So signing up to a challenge and then actually turning up was easier because we had different amounts of spare time. And possibly some consumers may just be a bit exhausted with that sort of content. And I know it's sort of like retargeting you know, five years ago clients used to say to me, I don't know what this business does. But I looked for a pair of shoes yesterday. And now shoes follow me everywhere. Maryann, how can we do that? You know, it's the magic era, you know, I remember conversations with my dad, like, it was so funny, you know, the plumbers ad came up, it's like, so funny. Whereas I think the consumer is more wise to it. Now, like most of us know, if we leave something in the car, we're probably going to get an email about it, you know, we're probably going to see some ads or ads in the category, I was having a great conversation with someone about targeted marketing and saying, as a consumer, you can almost shortcut the research. Just look at one, you know, yeah, we can get away, and then let all the ads calm.

Suzanne Chadwick
I always say I'm so happy to be marketed to yes, me so much time, like, I get so many new clothing brands that are exactly why I'm like, I'm like, I've never heard of them before. They look amazing. Let me go a shop. So I love to see every I love to be marketed to. And so with all of that changing what is working now that you're seeing?

MaryAnne Aimes
Yeah, absolutely, I'm seeing most businesses really reinvest back into their own lists. So doing more an email, doing more nurturing, doing more automations, doing more, you know, exclusive email offers or activating a loyalty campaign, so really trying to do more with who they have. And I think that gets back to some of that lifetime, you know, customer value as well. If we look at how much sometimes it attract it cost sorry to attract one person to our business, you know, if we can get more out of that person, if we can have a longer relationship with that person, we can save marketing costs, because we're not just bringing new people in all the time. So definitely seeing a lot of email marketing, refocused on, which is great. With that, obviously comes the need to focus on how you're going to build that list, you do then need to have strategy in place, we've actually found success with lead gen ads as a way, like a Facebook lead gen ad as it collects the data for you in its own form. That great little way to build your email list. So just explain that to me what, uh, yeah, absolutely. So in Facebook, you create an ad, and you use the lead gen objective. And what this does, it creates a way for Facebook to show the person the ad. So it might be, you know, sign up to our newsletter, and you could win $100 voucher, or you could win a, you know, a console, or you could get our free ebook, it does still work with the free ebooks as well. And then in Facebook ads itself, you create a form, so rather than a MailChimp or you know, a landing page, you're creating it in Facebook, me, the user who sees that ad, when I click, I want it. That form pops up on Facebook and actually pre fills my Facebook data. So my name's filled, my emails filled, if I've given Facebook, my phone number that's filled. So it becomes really easy for me to opt in, you know, I'm not going because often, you know, you send them to another form. And that's when they go, they're like, oh, no, not a form too much. But if you can keep them on the platform, and it's easy, you know, they'll stay. So we're seeing a lot of low cost lists building out of those sorts of strategies, which then helps to complement that email campaign. You know, you don't want to build your list and not do anything with your list. You want to have both ticking over together. And then the other I guess, area that's working more is Google ads. And I think, you know, we've chatted about this, Suz, I think it is about capturing high intent. If the consumer is less impulse if the consumer is a bit more time for a perceived time poor than they were before. Google ads is when they're ready. Google ads is when they need it. You know, I need the plumber now or I want the black cufflinks skirt. You know, I'm so specific because I know I need the things. So when I put it in, and that ad comes up and that skirt looks you know, bang on I'm checking out there's I've already reached the point where I'm ready to convert. Now I'm just looking for the where. So we are definitely finding Google ads. Always having that return on adspend that ROA s that Facebook was having before. It doesn't work for all businesses because you need to have I guess be at that high intent point of the funnel. If you're, you know, have a program or a product that is a long conversion or people it's an unconscious needs so people aren't likely to know that they need it. That's where you know, Facebook ads is great for discovery. I didn't know I needed had a erasable pen. But now that I've received this ad on Facebook, how am I going to live without it? You know, but I was not googling it. I wasn't ready for it before. So just different kinds of intense as well. Yeah, no, I love that because you're really capturing people when they're in that active buying phase of the journey as well, like I want it now. Let me search. Let me buy like we're there. Great. So the question is, is that we that shifting and changing? What do business owners now need to be doing as far as I guess, reassessing their strategy? So what are some of the key things that we need to be looking at? So obviously, you're taking a look at, you know, what's our lead gen strategy? You know, what are we using? They're making sure we're doing our emails, should Google ads now be part of our strategy as well? But I feel like it's like, there's so many options sometimes. How do you decide what's right for you? Oh, absolutely. And, Suze, it's no secret, I absolutely love data.

Suzanne Chadwick
Say, you know, that I can hear that to the salon sound bit, but like to the data. You know, if you're not using Google Analytics, if you don't have Shopify analytics, if there's not some way that you are tracking analytics within your business, you know, you need to get that in, because analytics won't look back on data it wasn't connected to it will only tell you from today. So there's no better day than today to get your analytics tracking. But if you are a business that have the analytics, I would be going in and looking at my you know, even traffic to begin with traffic to my website by source. And I'd be comparing, you know, six months to six months. What's up? What's the, you know, has my SEO dropped off? Am I not doing something in SEO? Or is my consumer potentially searching in a different way? And my website hasn't caught up? Or, you know, is my social traffic really high? Like what have I been doing in social? Can I do more of that is that where I should spend my time is my email traffic really high, really low. So I use that data as learnings based on what's been happening, to make decisions about what to do next. I as I said before, always go back to the ideal clients. So before I would start a strategy, the first thing I'd be encouraging you to do, if you don't have an ideal client profile, is to sit down and flush one out. And that's a matter of thinking about the general characteristics of the person that you've done the best business with, you know, those people when you booked that client in, or you you know, someone joined your program, or you sold or you're just like, this is the person I want more of them. You know, and we love to get really specific on building that person to be tangible. You know, what age do they tend to be? What's their life stage? Where do they live? And I talked before about conscious and unconscious needs, you know, what do they want? What do they say when you speak to them that they want? But then what do they need in terms of what aren't they saying? You know, what aren't they saying that I like in this one, too, sometimes. They may want, they want to be the first to know about things. They want to impress their friends that they're ahead of the trends. But what they actually need is validation from other people. So you know how in your copy, can you then market to them where you're, you're taking off that want of going, Hey, this is the latest trending style. But then that need, like your friends will be so jealous when it's that alignment. And you know, the ideal client profile is all about finding alignment for your marketing, how are you going to market in a way that your ideal client engages and goes, this is me, like, you know, and we all know it when we see it. When it's what you said before Sue's when those other brands similar to the brands you love remarket you, you're like, Oh, my God, this is me, those designs are made this caption is me, that offer is the exact sort of offer, I would opt into, like, you've got me and you know, that strategy has to start with Who Who are we talking to? Then I'd be looking at my data for insights on what you know, what's been working, what are the clues that something has changed, or, you know, we've missed something, or we're doing something amazing, and we just need to double down on it. And then I'd move into like test and learn phases, you know, using that data to go Alright, well, you know, I listened to this great podcast that Suz did, I'm going to try Google ads now. Or you try Google ads, you know, for two months, you and again with trying, trying not just trying it once it's not for a day, it's not you know, you have to give any digital strategy you do. I mean, realistically two to three months to really know and really say you too

Right, did I really know that you gave it enough budget or you gave it enough attention? Or you gave it enough consistency to make real learnings from it? But I would, you know, be putting some things in place and coming back in three months and looking at that data, what's the data telling me? What are the insights and, you know, that's also going into as simple as Instagram insights on your phone, and running through them and looking at what was my best post in the last three months, or what gave me the most Clicks to Website or what gave me the most DMS, all those sorts of things to learn, you know, what to do more of what to do less often, all the social platforms give you insights, it's just setting up that time and I know Susie are a huge advocate of the CEO day and you know, it's, it's including in that CEO day digital marketing, you know, putting that on your map as a key area of your business that you need to keep across and that you need to be checking in on and reading, you know, the digital p&l of how you're performing, so that you can make continue to make those improvements and continue to push your business forward. Yeah, you've I love that you need to coined that phrase, if you haven't already. The Digital p&l. I love that. That's so good. Yeah. And I was gonna say to you, like, obviously, yes, CEO days are great for assessing like, you know, how the business is tracking and where you're tracking financially, how you're tracking against your, you know, goals as well. And so, number one, how often do we should we be checking this? I know that you're sort of saying that, when you're testing and trying a new thing? It's like two to three months, but how often are you sort of looking at it? And then also, like, how can you, I guess, make decisions from it as well. So just understanding it better?

MaryAnne Aimes
Absolutely. Ask any person that works in agency, and I'll tell you that the first week of the month is absolutely held, because it's reporting week, and you know, pretty much any agency that you work with, and I would push you that anybody that you are working with anybody that is managing any part of your digital marketing needs to give you a monthly report. You know, we're all working on monthly reports in that first week. And that, to me is the, you know, the short term, look at what's going on. Looking each month at top three social posts, bottom three social posts, you know, website, traffic, changes, insights, looking at, you know, if you're running paid ads total spend for the month, total return and you know, that return doesn't have to be I spent $1 I got to the dollar, your objective may have been awareness, your objective may have been, you know, signing up to a certain link. So, you know, being, I guess, aware that it's not just about making dollars out of those platforms, there are other things that ad platforms work for. If you work with influencers at all, you know, if you co lab like, how did it go? How many entries did we get to that comp? Or how many new likes did we gain? When that influencer posted? Did we make any sales? You know, it's, it's having all that in a report? And you know, newsletter, what was the open rate? Which newsletter went well, you know, and drawing insight, not just having data, you know, the second piece is drawing insight. We sent out two newsletters, this one went better, was that the subject or you know, did have a really good open rate? Because that could be the subject, or was it the time of day, like maybe we'll pick that really good time of day again next month? So we can see if we think that's consistent, you know, once it was opened, it had a really poor click through rate, Was there enough opportunity to click? Did we tell them to do something, you know? Or do we just expect that they would go back to the web, you know, so it's a whole lot of problem solving. And it's, of course, it's subjective. You're giving your best, you know, instinct of what you think happened. But, you know, like any good scientist, you're testing the next month with that information. And you're, again, you know, gathering data, and then I think three months is a good period to start towards bigger decisions, you know, as I said, you know, three months okay, we ran those ads for three months now. We've seen month, you know, the first one, they didn't do too well, second month, they improved a bit, but you know, what, by month three, they were kind of no better. No, let's try something else. You know, I don't think you can make hard and fast decisions in that one month, but you can gather data. And then with digital marketing, I always say like six months is a good plan. So much changes, so many channels start and, you know, there's so many shiny objects along the way. You know, 12 months is just too long. There's just you know, the market changes the consumer changes, the landscape changes, planning in six month increments. Tracking every month having a look, you know, at that three month mark of new strategy, you know, making some calls on whether they're working or not. And then you know, every six months really considering has the consumer changed? hasn't yet market change? What should I be leveraging and the best thing about a structure like that, you can say goodbye the shiny objects, you know, when somebody says to you, oh, my god, like, Suze be real, like, why aren't you on being real? It's amazing. I want to see the other side of your desk. I want to know what you're doing over there. You know, and you go, Oh, my God, like we did with clubhouse Right. Like, oh, my God, we don't have to be on clubhouse. You know?

Suzanne Chadwick
I, they they got us with that. FOMO. You know, that VIP FOMO entrance is like one of those nightclubs with the big line. Yeah, it's kind of empty in here. They've only let women in.

MaryAnne Aimes
You know, I think when you have that strategy, you might get to clubhouse. But you got you know what you're working on right now. And you have a point where you can then consider it in the context of you know, your broader successes or failures with what you're doing currently. Yeah, absolutely. And one of the questions I had is, do you think that you're just always in a try and test mode? Or do you have goals? Like, should we have digital strategy goals as far as like, what we're aiming for? Or is it really just kind of like, let's set this as something that we want to test and try? And then let's measure whether it works or not like we do we have both?

Suzanne Chadwick
Yeah, I think it's it's the you know, odo Paso talker, like, why not have both?

MaryAnne Aimes
I can never think how to say in Spanish. And I would not do it justice. But you know, I think for me, it's that like, yes, you have to have goals. And these strategies that we're testing and trying and seeing what's going to get us to those goals, because there is no one hard and fast for anybody in any business. Everything is trialing and testing. And then yeah, we trial and test something, and it's working, then we want to you know, we want to sit with it, but keep trying to improve it as well, you know, that becomes the new base minimum, and we want to go so you know, you might have a goal of growing your list in number x to growing your open rate to decreasing your website bounce rates. So making sure people come in stay, rather than you send a whole lot of traffic there. But they exit immediately. Could be following numbers, if that's your thing. It could be Yeah, the amount of contact forms you get a month. So yes, you definitely need to have your goals in place. And then the testing of these strategies is trying to find the formula unique to you, as well as the market that's going to deliver you on that on that pathway. Yeah, no, I love that. So it's almost like sort of having those bigger business goals. And really your digital marketing strategy is just helping you to achieve that, that those sort of end goals. And you might try different paths to that end goal, depending on what you test and try and see what works. And if that works. Keep doing that go bigger on it. If it doesn't cut it loose. Try something else. So yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So good. And so I mean, right now, I know that, you know, there's so many different people that we can outsource things to. And so how do we make that decision? Like, how do we know who to trust? And who to go to? And like, what to invest in as well? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it's really hard. Because I think digital marketing is an industry where we sometimes think it's low value work. You know, I definitely talk to clients, and they're like, Oh, we're just going to try to get a student in, or, you know, so and so has a teenage daughter, and she's going to have an opinion, you sort of think, oh, yeah, yeah, it's interesting, that should go well, you know, just because it's a whole generation that were born with a phone in their hand, it doesn't mean that their market is Yeah, and the flip of that is, you know, there's so much business media around, outsource everything, outsource everything. But the truth is outsourcing costs money. And if your business isn't profitable, it's not the time to be outsourcing. And, you know, you need as I said, you need to run it things to know they work. So if you're going to work with someone in outsource capacity, you need to know you can give it six months with that partner, to really let them get in and have a go at it and determine if it can be a successful profitable addition to your business. So I have, I guess, my own sort of rule of thumb so small, you know, small businesses, small profitability, maybe small capacity as well. You know, you you book out quickly. So you know, maybe you're a photographer or a personal stylist, you know, you'd

Suzanne Chadwick
For the people that are guests to trading their time for money, you can only scale so far personally. So I think, you know, and also like small boutiques, retail or cosmetic clinics, that sort of where you need photos all the time, these sorts of businesses, I think a great place to start is a really skilled social media manager. So they're going to focus on your organic social media primarily. And, you know, generally, they'll be able to help them with photography and videography, you know, one to one sort of content, they might come in and see you, you know, a couple of times in a month and capture content and pull it all together, they should be down the more cost effective side as well. I was literally just gonna ask, do you have like a ballpark figure for that? Because I think this is the other thing that scares people is they're like, Oh, my God isn't gonna cost me $5,000 a month if I outsource my socials. And yeah, so I think people just don't know as well. Like, what, what the price range or the brackets are. And I know that obviously, you're going to have people that are more experienced and skilled and doing more, but any thoughts?

MaryAnne Aimes
It's like when people on those groups ask how much a logo is, and one person says, $10 $5,000? I don't know the answer to that question. My gut feel would be some, let's say somewhere between 515 100 a month, okay. And don't worry, we won't hold you to it. managers don't come to me like I'm just I'm just for my audience depends on scope. Like if somebody's coming out to see your take photos, and you're supplying everything, and they're just pulling it together, jazzing up the captions, and the hashtags and scheduling that needs to be more towards the five, you know, 750, I think 1500 is more when someone's coming out to see you, my gut feel, please don't come to me. So that would I would be saying that's your first year of outsourcing. This second is to me specialist help. So you can do your socials, you know, maybe you've got a personal brand, you have to be really hands on and you find, you know, even with my personal brand side, I find it hard to give to my team to do because it is so personal, I want to write my captions and you're the same suit like I want my picture. It's personal, I want it to be they wouldn't quite even though they've worked with me for years, they wouldn't quite get my voice.

So say you're gonna hang on to the socials. But maybe you've got a lot of automations and emails that you want to set up on nurture series. So you might go to an expert for that, or ads, I think there's only so far you can get dry in your own ads. And I know, in our business, and it would be the same to anyone who manages ads, you 100% get more out of your budget. If an expert does it, then if you do it yourself. So you know, you might have someone do your Facebook ads or your Google ads, you might have someone who manages your website. So I think there's those specialist areas where you sort of go, I'm going to you know, allocate $1,000, or, you know, on this project, or I'm going to allocate, you know, 1000 or $2,000 per month on this Ad Management, I wouldn't expect that to include ad fees, and this person is going to help me, you know, from that expert point of view. So that would be where I'd kind of it's almost like a second tier or, you know, they could just be two different business models, one that could use a social media manager, one that needs an expert, you might also be using a social media manager, and then using an ADS person. Once you think you need a few of those things. I think that's when an agency makes sense. Because when one person manages your socials and another person manages your ads, and then someone else is going into your website and making changes or programming your automations number one for you, it's a nightmare to manage all those different people, oh, social media person, by the way, we're doing this ads campaign. So we need to make sure that we don't you know, it's just too much complexity, you know, it's almost like you mess or DIY again, because you've got your finger in all these areas. Number two, it starts to stack up in cost because you're paying all these people individually you're not getting any kind of efficiency. And number three, you're missing all that cross pollination of your marketing you know, your your emails aren't talking to what's happening with your social ad campaign and your website's not necessarily on the same page as you know, your Google ads. It just there's a there's a degree and and I think that's when you might be more of the kind of, I have 3000 plus I can spend a month and then I have ad spend to investment top of that, I'm going to go to one agency, who can partner with me become my, you know, my outsourced marketing team where I can, you know, I guess also not have to drive the strategy. I think sometimes the social media managers, and the little, you know, not I shouldn't say little with the individual specialists, you're almost bringing them a bit of the strategy, I want to do this this way. And then they might say, oh, let's try it that way. But an agency I think, will build your strategy first and almost consult back to you, we think you need to do social ads, not Google ads, you need to do LinkedIn, and Instagram. And you know, we need to be writing two blogs a month on your website. So I think you reach that point where that outsource marketing partner is more efficient and more effective, then trying to build individuals around you. That sounds like bit bliss.

Having somebody just do all of that for you, that sounds a match. I know, right? I know, I know, the ideal. Yeah. And you know, as I say, obviously, I'm big believer in profitability. So you have to be at the right point, and you need to give it time, you know, that agency is not going to crack your business in the first month, they need to learn adapt. I mean, if you're not getting reports, if they're not talking to you about strategy changes along the way, you know, that there's some red flags that they might not be right. But if they're giving you reports, they're making changes, they're working with you to improve, you know, giving that six months is, is required to see if it can really work for you. So you need to know that you've got that money that you can invest, that's not going to affect, you know, you don't want to get two months in and then sort of go oh, my gosh, it's killing me, I'm running out of money, I thought we'd be making 10s of 1000s of dollars by week to have really, really sick and again, in those engagement times having those conversations, you know, what do you think for my sort of business? When do you think that this investment will say return for me? What are the goals of us working together? What does that look like? I mean, the sheer bliss of outsourcing it all to one responsible party is amazing. But you need to have the foundations in place that it's going to be successful for you too. Yeah, I love that. Put that on my vision board.

Just like I'll just go off and do my thing. And then somebody else, maybe a COO, and then like a digital agency can just like run everything that would be amazing, as well. But Marian, I know that you coach CEOs to become more digitally aware and have that digital acumen to be able to make those decisions. So just talk to me a little bit about that, like, Who do you work with? What level? What do you do with them? Yeah, absolutely. Look, it does tend to be with that six to seven figure CEO or business owner because they tend to be outsourcing to begin agencies, they tend to have called in that marketing partner. Basically, I work through first of all, making sure the foundations of reporting are in place. So looking at what they're receiving, understanding if it's enough, or if they need to be requesting new things, then it's about working with those reports and getting a baseline of what their understanding is, you know, firstly, sort of getting them to walk me through what are you being told? What are you being told as success does this look like success, working through it, and then identifying, you know, what's working and what's not, and helping them to know where to look, again, that Google Analytics is such a rich piece of information, but you need to know what to consume. And when it comes to data, like statistics, we can make statistics say many different things, we can make a statistic sound amazing, if that's what we want, you know, or we can make it sound good, every every statistic has an inverse, you know, 30% of women don't drink coffee. 70% of women love coffee, you know, we can make it say whatever we want. So it's really important as a CEO that you understand what you're being told, but also what the truth is. And then we look at making sure they have a foundation in place of ideal client and if they don't, helping them understand how to either charge their outsource partner in creating that if that's in their scope or otherwise, helping them as an organization or a business into how they can build that what data, you know, maybe sales data or again, social media followership how we can build that picture for your business. And then it's about I guess, building that out their confidence in the outcomes so that as time goes on, they know when you know like they know when to spot it, they or they know when they've been put into you know When the honeymoon period is over, where they know to go, hang on, I don't think you've made any changes in anything in six months, or I feel like I've been, you know, handed down the line or you know, you're not spending as much time on my account. So, you know, it's the jargon. It's all of that, that. I think as business owners, and CEOs we kind of learn to accept. It's like, oh, I don't understand that. But I don't need to buy it. It's like our accounting side, you do need to, you know, it will love it or not. And so many marketers tell me, you know, I hate numbers. I'm not good with numbers. I hate numbers like, well, reality chat, it's a massive part of marketing, to be able to work with numbers and interpret numbers and then be crazy enough to own a business. And numbers, because you know, numbers become even more important. So it's, it's really helping them the foundations of strategy, assessing performance, and developing their digital acumen. Yeah, I love that. That's so good. And I guess like, it would be like 500k Plus, would you say? Because at that stage, you're probably outsourcing to an agency, which is kind of what you help people to understand. Yeah, absolutely. And genuinely, they will have a team of their own of some degree, you know, whether that's a virtual team or some, you know, a small team around them. But yeah, absolutely. It tends to be about that. 500k Plus, before, they're investing, you know, currently in ads, and significantly management that they need to really be certain that that investments paid off. Yeah, for sure. I love that. That's so good. There, yeah. Thank you so much for helping us become more digitally savvy CEO.

You know, the market is changing, like you said, what was happening in 2020, and 2021. And then 2022, like such a roller coaster ride? Yeah. And now, like you said, like Facebook ads, and some of the lead magnets we've been using for the last few years, are just not cutting it anymore. And so how can we start to think differently, measure what's working and, you know, make informed decisions? You think is really important. Like you said, I think that us understanding how to manage our money is just as important. What is it our digital p&l?

Suzanne Chadwick
To get that up on a graphic?

I love it that spoke to me. I think that yeah, that's totally I think it's so important for us to understand it. Amazing. So where can people find out more about you follow you connect with you?

MaryAnne Aimes
Awesome. Thanks, Suze? Look, they can find me on Instagram and LinkedIn just at Marian Amy's on both. And they can also tune into my podcast marketing with confidence where I really just break down in those simple terms. You know, no fastener overwhelm lots of different stuff about what you need to know in digital marketing.

Suzanne Chadwick
Yeah, amazing. And we'll have all of Maryann's links in the show notes as well. But thanks so much for hanging out. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Pleasure.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai