In this episode, Sara Nay, Chief Operating Officer of Duct Tape Marketing, shares how she sees all the little things that make our community members feel appreciated, informed, special, and cared for.
You will discover:
– Why you may want to outsource your marketing for better results
– Why strategy must precede tactics for marketing success
– How to implement your first real marketing strategy
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome, once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast. And I am here with yet another high demand coach. It is the one and only Sara Nay who is the COO of duct tape marketing. With over 14 years working with small businesses, it is her passion to install marketing and operating systems for small business owners so that they can more gain more clarity and freedom in their lives. As the COO she oversees company wide operations. She works to support the company culture and vision and designs and implements business systems. She’s always believed in focusing on strategy before tactics. She and her company champion sustainable marketing strategies over quick fixes and gimmicks, ensuring that their clients feel confident and in control as their businesses achieve predictable growth. Well, Sara, so excited to have you here, and I just have to ask before we, kind of Yeah, before we kind of jump into things, what is duct tape marketing?
Sara Nay
Duct tape marketing, we’ve been in business for about 30 or so years, I’ve been with the company, as you mentioned, for 14 and we’ve always been focused on small businesses. That’s always been our bread and butter over those years, we call ourselves a fractional cmo agency, because we always lean into strategy before tactics in our marketing, and so we serve a lot of clients in the space as fractional CMOS. But we also have a team to help with execution as well. So that’s duct tape marketing. And we have a certification program where we also certify other marketing consultants and coaches in our approach. So really, two sides of our business.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. You’ve mentioned this. It was in your body as well. This idea of strategy before tactics. Two questions on that, what does that look like, or what does that actually mean? And secondly, why is it so important?
Sara Nay
Yeah, so over the years, we’ve worked with 1000s of businesses in the small business space, and where I see people get really frustrated or waste a lot of time or energy or money in marketing is they just dive into tactics without taking a step back and saying, Who are we targeting with? What message? What does our customer journey look like? What content should we create based on that? Okay, now you can focus on the channels, but really, all marketing comes down to is understanding your target audience, building products and services around them, crafting messages that speak directly to them and then nurturing them along the way. And so that’s how you can be effective in marketing. And I see a lot of people, you know, oh, I need to be doing paid advertising because my competitors are or whatnot. And so they dive into that, but they haven’t thought through the target market or the messaging or where they’re trying to guide people. And so they end up just spending and spending and spending without having success. And so then all of a sudden, marketing is really frustrating. But it doesn’t have to be if you put the initial research in on the front end.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. So important. So there’s, there’s this pattern that I see a lot with particularly small business owners, uh, depending on the industry, some you can get a little bigger than others, but they reached this point. Let’s call it around a million dollars. That’s a massive generalization, but they where they realize, like, if I’m gonna hit $2 million I can’t just, like, you know, drama, like, just make it happen. I actually have to have some way of going out there and marketing. And many of them have have succeeded despite their marketing, and now they’re realizing they have to succeed because of it. How does marketing change when you kind of break that million dollar mark and set your sights on five or even ten million dollars.
Sara Nay
Yeah, we’ve seen a lot of businesses over the years that we’ve worked with where they’ve grown up to a certain extent, a lot of times based on providing great service, great products, building great client relationships. And so a lot of their business coming in is often just from referrals, word of mouth, type of business. And so then they get to the point where their growth starts to stall. And so they realize, okay, I can’t just rely on referrals for the rest of our lives if we do want to hit higher growth periods. And so that’s where diversifying your marketing is so important. Like referrals are always going to be the best type of prospects coming in that you can get because there’s a lot of trust built into those. And so there’s always going to be the best, but often you’re limited by numbers. And so we always look out for our clients, if they’re getting great referrals, what else can they do to get more referrals, but also diversify where their sources are coming from? So if they’re getting referrals, do they need to lean into paid or SEO or new strategic partnerships, or what are the different areas so you’re not all just relying on one channel for your new business coming in.
Scott Ritzheimer
You’ve kind of talked about this idea of choosing channels, and the question I have for you, because there’s this temptation to do it, but does every business need to be on every marketing channel. Do like do they have to have every social media platform covered? How do you know where to really focus your energy?
Sara Nay
Yeah, and so that comes back to what we were talking about earlier in the initial strategies. You have to understand who you’re targeting and when you’re understanding your target market, your ideal clients, whatever personas, whatever you word you want to throw in there, people use. Different things like you want to understand, where do they hang out online, or how do they find businesses like yours? How do they make buying decisions? And so that will then help you direct what channels you should be on if you’re more B to B, for example, a lot of people hang out on LinkedIn, where if you’re more B to C, like Facebook or Instagram might be a better channel. So it just depends on who you’re targeting and where do they hang out already online, and then connecting with them there, versus being on every single platform or channel, because it’s incredibly overwhelming, especially as a small business owner, to do well on that many different channel platforms.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, a lot of business owners that I’ve come across, again, this kind of varies by industry, but a lot of the ones that I work with don’t necessarily have a lot of time to spend, like becoming an Instagram influencer champion. It’s not kind of, and that’s not how they build their business. They build it kind of offline and out of that world. And so even the thought of, you know, where did they hang out? And how do they find businesses like yours can feel a little intimidating to some of these folks when they haven’t really done it first. What is that first step into really answering those questions?
Sara Nay
Yeah, so typically, when we’re doing strategy for our clients, we start with doing a couple pieces, three pieces. That leads us to that. So we always start with an online present thought, I’d just get a feel for like, what is the business doing online today? Then we do competitive research, because you can see where your competitors are doing, where they’re focusing their energy and money and effort online, because that might help direct you as to what channels should you focus on. But then I think the most powerful step that we do is we actually interview their clients, and so we understand, like we do usually, like, five to 10 to 15 ideal client interviews. And so we’re working with the business, and we’re interviewing their clients, and we’re understanding them on a very deep level, and we’re asking them questions about, like, where do you find your information online? How did you find this business? Did you research the competitors? Why did you before with this business versus the other ones? Because you’re learning, then from your best possible clients, then hopefully attract more people like them moving forward. So all of that research then allows us to create, okay, here’s ideal client profiles. These are the types of people that we want to attract moving forward, and then you can start working on, okay, what messaging should we craft from a marketing and sales perspective to help pull those people in to tell the story and to understand their pain points and where they’re trying to go. Transformation standpoint,
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. Now you mentioned in that last answer, this sales. And so the question that I have for you is, should you be thinking about sales differently to folks that come in through channels other than referrals, right? So if folks move into this space, does it change the conversation in any way? Should they be thinking about it differently?
Sara Nay
Yeah, so we have our customer journey. We call it the marketing hour last it’s essentially how can people get to know like trust, try, buy, repeat and refer a business. And so when we’re working on marketing strategy. We’re mapping that out for all clients. And the thing with referrals is, when they come into your world, they’re moving through no like trust. Try buy a lot faster, typically, because there’s already that trust built in, versus if someone saw a paid ad, went to your website for the first time, they know nothing about you, especially if you’re selling, like, a higher ticket sale, like, there’s a lot of nurturing education, value, trust relationship that needs to happen to they get to the point where they’re ready to buy often. And so Absolutely, it makes sense, you know, to understand where is a lead coming from, and then that will help direct how you can sell to them. And so, like, we’ve been in business for 30 years. People have been on our list for email list for years and years, and so if I’m selling our certification program and someone’s like, Oh, I am. I’ve been reading all of your stuff. I’ve listened to your CEO’s podcast forever. I love everything you put out. I’ve read six of his books. Like, then I’m like, Okay, I know how to handle this conversation differently than if it was like, I saw your ad. I don’t know anything about duct tape marketing. Tell me what I need to know. So you definitely approach the sale differently based on how much they’ve been able to consume and what relationship they’ve came from on the front end.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So one of the things that you mentioned kind of this going in, doing some market research, interviewing clients. What do you think is the advantage of having someone outside of the company doing that?
Sara Nay
There’s a lot of advantage, I think a lot of times when you’re working in your business for so long, you see things a certain way, and you think things a certain way. But maybe your ideal clients are either like perceiving things differently than you, so So like when we’re doing these ideal client interviews, we’re asking curious, honest questions without any judgment in our mind, because we’re doing it on behalf of our clients, and so we’re just truly listening and not directing the conversation in any sort of way, which I think you could do if you were interviewing your own clients potentially. But also, there’s a lot. Of business problems that I also feel like when you’re just in it and you’re in it every single day, it’s hard to find a solution, and so having that outside perspective and guidance come in, it can help you get past any of those different roadblocks as well.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, I love that. I’ve found it’s one of those areas that that it’s just way too easy to be way too close, right? You’re trying to do everything right here, and someone comes in and it seems almost magical, right? It’s like, Oh, why don’t you say this? And it’s like, oh, it just totally transforms your world. But it’s and it’s not that, it’s not that, if you need that you’re dumb or you’re bad at marketing or or any of those things. It’s just that I’ve actually seen this in the marketing world. A lot of folks will go to someone else in the marketing world to help them, because they’re just too close to it.
Sara Nay
Yeah. Also, the clients are a lot more honest with us as well, often because they’re not speaking directly to the business owner, whoever their relationship was. There were this third party coming in, they have no relationship with us, and so they’re able to be completely honest, which is really beneficial as well, because we’re understanding all like the different persona elements and messaging elements, but we’re also asking things like, what could they do better? What other services could they provide? Is there areas for improvement? And then we’re able to take that feedback and go directly back to clients as well, because maybe there’s repeat upsell, cross sell opportunity that the client hasn’t thought of again because they’re too close. So having those conversations with their clients allows them to be 100% open and honest to then be able to bring that opportunity back to the client as well. So that’s another win I think.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s so good. So one of the challenges, especially as you start laying out a kind of a process like you have there when you when you do the good but hard work of putting your strategy before tactics is, you know, you’re pouring a lot of money into it. You’re trusting a partner to help you with it. How do you know if it’s working?
Sara Nay
Yeah, so with the strategy piece, you don’t really know that is working until you move into the execution side of things. And so typically with our clients, we’re doing strategy for like, 30 to 45 days, we present the plan, and then after that, we go into execution. And the way you understand if the strategy is working is you say, at the end of strategy, we say, Okay, we’re going to do these things on these channels with this cadence, and then we’re going to know it’s successful, because we’re going to track these metrics. The metrics piece is so key, and so you have to understand, okay, let’s say you’re going to do direct mail, for example. That’s just a random example, but let’s say you’re going to do direct mail, you have to say, Okay, if we’re going to use that channel, how are we going to know it’s if it’s successful or not? What are we going to track to then determine if we should do that next month and next month and next month from there. And so with the direct mail, you want to track like number of pieces sent. You want to have a call tracking number on there. You want to track numbers of calls received, number of those converted into clients, and then total revenue. And you need to know all of that information then to say this was successful, let’s keep doing this. And that’s where another and another area that I see a lot of small businesses miss, is they just do tactics, but they don’t stop and think, what do we actually need to know in order to continue to do these things or shift to something new?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. So, Sara, there’s this question I like to ask Oh, my guests, and it is this, what would you say is the biggest secret you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching your listing today knew?
Sara Nay
You know, I know you talk about a lot about scaling. That’s a big focus on your show. We’ve talked a lot about marketing today, but I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, business owners, people just getting started as well, because we certify marketing consultants coaches in our program. And this isn’t a secret, but I think it’s the biggest thing that people struggle with as they begin to scale up, is delegation. As your friend. I see a lot of people try to hold on to way too much and not take the time to put the systems and processes in place, marketing or operations, or whatever it might be, and then it’s almost impossible to scale, because they’re just holding on to too much. And so I try to encourage people very early on, when they join our program, come in, learn the process, hire earlier than you think you might need to even starting with part time, get really comfortable with delegation, because that’s really going to lead to growth long term. So I know that’s not marketing related, but something that I think is important to focus on.
Scott Ritzheimer
It’s so true. And I think while, you know, it’s not inherently marketing related, one of the things that I’ve found is that the need to delegate, in many ways, reaches its peak at the same time that you’re needing to focus on this, you know, this world of active, outbound marketing. And so I would say my experience has been that they very much are related in the sense that if you can’t figure the delegation thing out, you’re never going to have the time and discipline over time to really work out your strategy and tactics for marketing. Yeah, absolutely couldn’t agree more. Fantastic. So. Sarah, there’s some folks listening to this, and they know that they’re the kind of old way of marketing, which was not really marketing at all, but just waiting for referrals to come in was great. It got them to where they are. They’re super thankful for it, but they know that they need more before they can really build a scalable company. How can they reach out to you? How can they find more about the work that you do?
Sara Nay
Yeah, they can visit us at dtm.world/growth. That’ll take you to a page on our website. We have a bunch of free resources. We’re big on producing content, providing value on the front end. So grab the free resources. There’s also an option to book a call with me if you want to continue a conversation as well.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. Well, Sara, thanks so much for being on the show. Just an honor and privilege, having you here today, loved, loved what you had to share. And for those of you watching listening, you know your time and attention, mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Sara Nay
Sara Nay is the COO of Duct Tape Marketing. With 14+ years working in the small business space, it is her passion to install marketing and operating systems for small business owners so they can get more clarity and freedom in their lives. As the COO, she oversees company-wide operations, work to support the company culture and vision, and designs and implements business systems. She has always believed in focusing on strategy before tactics. She and her company champion sustainable marketing strategies over quick fixes and gimmicks, ensuring their clients feel confident and in control as their business achieves predictable growth.
Want to learn more about Sara Nay’s work at Duct Tape Marketing? Check out her website at https://ducttapemarketing.com/ and get your free resources at dtm.world/growth.
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