Rev & Reach Episode 15 – The Compound Effect: How it All Comes Together

00:08

LORI: Hello, everybody. I’m Lori Jo Vest. Welcome to this episode of Rev & Reach, where the team at PopSpeed Digital Marketing LLC pulls the curtain aside and shares with you what we do and how we do it. So I’m here today with Kiley Metcalfe.

KILEY: Hi, everybody.

LORI: Kiley and I are the chief client contact project managers. What do we do? I don’t even know where to begin. So many different things—anything from, yeah, like all of the nitty-gritty in social to a little bit more client-facing to the project management. We wear a lot of hats over here.

KILEY: Yes, absolutely.

LORI: So today we’re going to talk about the compound effect, and what that is: what should you be doing in your digital marketing? Should you just do social media? Should you do a newsletter? Should you do a blog? Should you update your website regularly? And the answer to that is all of the above. This topic reminds me of a call I had the other day with a guy who has an agency—started out in television production, and just has grown and grown and grown. And he said, “I don’t know much about marketing, but I tell my clients, ‘You need to be everywhere because that’s what works.’” And it’s so simple, such a simple way of saying it: you need to be in lots of different places because you need to continue to show up where your potential clients are. Back when all the promotion was done via television commercials, radio spots, billboards, newspapers, and magazines, they said someone would have to see your brand five times in order to remember it. And that’s a big deal, and I don’t think that statistic has really changed. So, Kiley, what are your thoughts on this one?

2:06
KILEY: I think that what you just said is excellent advice, in the sense that your audience lives in various places, right? So you’re never going to reach every single possible customer, client, prospect, lead—you know, whatever the case may be—in one segment. You know what I mean? Everybody lives in different places, whether that’s Google Search, or social media, or different channels on social media, or email, right? So, the best way to really reach everybody and keep yourself—your brand—top of mind for everybody in your audience is to be everywhere. Is it more of an effort? For sure. But a lot of content—and I think a lot of brands maybe don’t necessarily realize this—is reusable.

2:59
LORI: But, you know, it’s really interesting because I do know that some clients either don’t want to spend the time, or don’t want to spend the money on all of those things. And what I would encourage you to think about is, would you cheap out on your dental care? Would you cheap out on painting your house? Would you tell the guy to go ahead and paint it but don’t bother power washing it, don’t bother, you know, pre-coating it? Just, you know, just throw the paint on there and we’re good. You want to do a thorough job to maximize the sale. And you can look at it like, if you were to sell one, you know, client in for a year—say you’re a dental studio and you’re selling one client in for a year—how much money is that? And how many clients can you get by coordinating and putting your efforts together and having multiple touch points, right?

3:59
KILEY: Absolutely. I think, again, we go back to the dental industry a lot. I think it’s such a good category for really talking about all of the ways that the pieces come together. You think about it in terms of—even word of mouth, too, right? In the sense that, if you have a lot of your past loyal patients, and you’re a dental practice, on your email list, and you send out an email about, “Oh, this month, if you book your full arch dental implant procedure or your consultation, we’re taking X amount off of the total price,” right? Of course, somebody that you’ve worked with in the past—that’s not going to appeal to them—but they’re on your list, and they know somebody that might be in the market, they’re going to pass that along. And then again, there’s no guarantee with any social post that one person will see it, right? Or maybe that person’s not on social, or maybe you’re doing something website-specific.

5:05
KILEY: So really, and I think we’ll get into it here, this might be a good time to start that conversation. We have one client in particular—they’re our nonprofit client, the grief support group that we’ve talked about plenty of times on Rev & Reach before—and for them, this is what we do: we are compounded in all of these areas for them, between website updates, their newsletter, and all of their social, as well as their blog on their website. It’s pretty collaborative over there, but we keep it SEO-friendly; we, at the very least, proof and edit any blogs that they give us, if not write it ourselves.
And with them, obviously, it’s a little bit more niche given the specificity of what they do over there, but we have seen the real, tangible evidence of how all of these factors come into play and work together to really secure all of the ROI that a nonprofit like this is looking for, right?

6:14
LORI: Exactly. I mean, it really does. Just to give you an example, like, we always are helping them find volunteers, and it goes in their newsletter, and it goes on social media, and there’s a page on their website. Their website traffic is really high—I mean, there is a lot of traffic going to their website—and we don’t do any Google Display or Google AdWords campaigns at all. They either come from social or they come from search, simply because the site is so dense with grief support for children content, right?
So, another reason to make sure that you are doing many different things: we don’t own the social platforms. When we use the social platforms, you can get shut down. I have seen people’s businesses accidentally get shut down by Meta. So if you don’t have a list and you’re not doing emails and you don’t have a strong website, and you’re not doing blogs, you just lost everything. Because if all you’re doing is Facebook and Instagram, and they boot you off for some unknown, weird reason—which does happen—you have actually lost more than you… you’ve lost everything at that point, if that’s all you’re doing, right?

LORI: Another example would be the way social can feed the newsletter. You can do newsletter-specific promotions to see what happens. You can do social-specific promotions to see what happens. So you can test and see which of them are doing more for you, but know that even if one of them—if social is your strong suit—your email still supports that, right? It supports it. And you can solicit for email signups on your social media. If your content’s strong, they’ll sign up. If you’re offering a gift or some helpful information, people that are your people will sign up—not everybody, but just your people, right?

8:11
KILEY: Right. I think that’s such a good point, too, because—especially, I think there are very rare cases where a brand has just one indicator of ROI, right? And I think this nonprofit we work with is a great example of that. As Lori said, we spend a lot of time on volunteers; we spend, I would say, equally as much time on fundraisers and donors, event attendees, families—families in the community to come and use their resources, campers when they have camp; the list really goes on. And all of those ROI indicators are existing in different places. Whereas finding donors or sponsors of a philanthropic nature might work great on LinkedIn for them, their email list probably isn’t the place to do it. Vice versa, where, you know, finding volunteers—maybe if it’s a demographic of alumni or older people in the community and they’re just not existing on Facebook as much—the email list might be the best place for them to stay informed, right?
So, while all of these things come together, there’s no one-size-fits-all for every single little niche market or demographic that you’re trying to hit. They play together. That’s not to say you’re never going to find a volunteer on Facebook—of course, we do all the time. However, getting really, really involved with your specific community—and that’s going to be those people that are regular openers of your email list—is just as important in that case. So really, using that content—not interchangeably; it needs to be edited depending on where it’s going and what it’s doing—but it doesn’t have to be that complicated for it to be that effective, right?

10:18
You can take a social post that you put up this month about, “This is our volunteer orientation date that’s coming up next,” and edit that post to include in your newsletter and use the same photo of past volunteers, right? There’s no rules in that sense—well, there are efficiencies, but there are efficiencies, yes, exactly. So, while it may cost a little more if you’re working with an agency to have several compounded efforts, or if you’re doing it internally, it might take a little bit more, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming, and it really isn’t if you keep it simple.

11:01
LORI: Absolutely. So, I think that’s probably all we have to talk about today. The one thing I would add, just as a reminder, is: if you’re doing social media, it doesn’t work if you don’t include an ad spend. Yes, some kind of ad spend. So social with an ad spend is what we mean when we say social media marketing, because you have to have an ad spend these days or it’ll get shown to like 10 people, right?
KILEY: Right. Exactly. Not worth it.
LORI: So, and what’s… all right. So that’s what we’ve got for you today. We’ll be back soon with some helpful, useful information on how to get better ROI from your social media and digital marketing efforts. So stay tuned, and we’ll be back soon.
KILEY: Bye, everybody. Thanks!