In this episode of the Throttle Up Leadership Podcast, Dr. John Dentico interviews Sandra Kokotovic, the co-founder and creative director of Snap Advantage. Sandra shares her journey from growing up in Romania to becoming a successful digital nomad and marketing expert. The discussion covers her early influences, the inception and challenges of Snap Advantage, the impact of living and working in over 20 countries, and the role of mindset and persistence in business success. Sandra also provides insights into influencer marketing, social media strategies for e-commerce brands, and the future impact of artificial intelligence in digital marketing.
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
01:19 Sandra's Background and Influences
03:34 Founding Snap Advantage
06:15 Challenges and Resilience in Business
07:41 Digital Nomad Lifestyle and Its Impact
10:33 AI in Digital Marketing
14:02 Influencer Marketing Insights
17:49 Developing Social Media Strategies
25:29 Mindset and Business Success
27:59 Conclusion and Farewell
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr John Dentico (00:05):
Welcome to the Throttle Up Leadership Podcast.
Our theme for 2025 is The Futureof Work: Meaning is the New Money!
In a world shaped by rapid innovation andconstant change the pursuit of purpose
and impact has never been more important.
I'm Dr John Dentico your host,bringing over 30 years of experience
(00:28):
in leadership, strategic thinkingand purpose-driven innovation.
Here we tackle the pressing challengesof our time-from the rise of
artificial intelligence to the growingneed for meaning in the workplace.
Together we'll uncover how leaderscan ethically integrate AI to enhance
decision-making and keep humanityat the heart of their organizations.
(00:51):
Remember amidst all thetechnological advancements in the
end, it's always about the people.
This podcast is your resource foractionable tools, thought provoking
discussions and inspiring stories.
It's time to go beyond leadershipdevelopment and focus on leadership
(01:11):
impact-creating workplaces where peoplethrive, innovation flourishes and
meaning truly becomes the new currency.
Thank you for joining me on this journey.
Now, let's Throttle Up anddive into today's episode.
Hello and welcome to theThrottle Up Leadership Podcast.
It's me Dr John Dentico I'mhappy you're here with us today.
(01:35):
With me is Sandra Kokotovic.
The co-founder and creative director ofSnap Advantage, a digital marketing agency
specializing in e-commerce brand growth.
With over a decade of experiencein digital marketing, Sandra has
a proven track record of elevatingbrands to market leadership positions.
(01:57):
Sandra embraces a location independentlifestyle as a full-time digital nomad.
Having lived and worked in over 20countries, she has successfully scaled
her digital marketing business to sevenfigures while exploring the world.
How cool is that?
Sandra frequently shares her expertisewith various platforms, including podcasts
(02:21):
and webinars where she discusses topicssuch as: influencer marketing, content
creation, automation, and effective socialmedia strategies for e-commerce brands.
I am truly pleased that sheis here joining me today.
Good morning, Sandra.
How are you?
Sandra Kokotovic (02:41):
Good morning.
What an intro.
Thank you so much.
Very excited to be here.
Dr John Dentico (02:46):
Great to have you here.
Branding and influencers.
You see it all every day.
Sandra, let me begin with thisquestion for you Tell me a bit about
Sandra Kokotovic (02:57):
Mm-hmm.
Dr John Dentico (02:58):
Where did you grow up and what were some of the
fundamental influences in your life?
Sandra Kokotovic (03:05):
Actually grew up in Romania in Eastern Europe,
and I moved to Canada in 2005.
So I've lived my entire life as, Idon't wanna say a split personality,
but half of the heart is thereand half of the heart is here.
And that's why I choseto go back on the road.
I feel like for me, beingstuck in one place is not it.
(03:25):
Eastern Europe is calling.
So when you were talking about mebeing in multiple countries and
working there, my goal in life.
In terms of influences in my life, thisis a very tough question and I don't
know if it is cliche to say the parents.
I know there's a lot of influencerscelebrities and people that I look up to,
authors and speakers who, whenever theycome out with a new book, I'll pick it up.
But I would say my parents, one daythey picked up their bags and two
(03:50):
kids and then they moved to Canada.
Somehow made it work.
My, Dad, is an engineer and he had to workwhatever jobs to put foot on the table.
He is a professor now, so he got hisPhD at 56 while working multiple jobs
my mom, went from being a PR workingwith government people to working
at Navy and then being fired becausetheir English was not good enough.
(04:12):
And then she ended up having similar toyou, she has podcasts and a. Romanian
newspaper, Romanian show on Rogers TV.
Again, there's a lot of influencers outthere to look up to, but the biggest
influence in my life has been my parents.
And what determined me to be, moresuccessful than I can averagely be was the
fact that my parents gave everything upto come to Canada for me and my brother.
(04:35):
And I can't take that lightly.
Dr John Dentico (04:37):
That's a great answer.
Wonderful.
Hey, listen I always say don't everbe afraid to learn something new.
Is a rule in my life.
I finished my doctorate when I was 49,
Sandra Kokotovic (04:47):
Wow.
Dr John Dentico (04:48):
We're gonna start again.
Try something different.
Sandra Kokotovic (04:50):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (04:50):
Very interesting doing that later in were a number of people that
were in my program were also starting.
That la much later in life.
Sandra Kokotovic (04:59):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (05:00):
It's an interesting journey to be honest about it.
Sandra Kokotovic (05:03):
I believe.
Dr John Dentico (05:03):
Let me move on what inspired you to co-found Snap
Advantage and what unique challengesdid you face during its inception?
Sandra Kokotovic (05:14):
So I didn't grow up thinking I'm going to be a
marketer and own a marketing agency.
That was not my answer whenthey were asking that in school.
But when I met my now husband nineyears ago, he was an online marketer.
I had no idea what that meant at the time.
All I knew is he was selling jewelryonline and he was working remotely.
I was working for the government.
(05:34):
Coming from Eastern Europe where5, 6, 7 weeks vacation a year is
the norm and the balance of lifeand working is very apparent.
In Canada, that was back when twoweeks was the norm, and then maybe
if you worked in a tech company, youwould get three weeks or four weeks.
So I said, I'm gonnawork for the government.
It's safe, it's secure.
Pay is good.
And I get vacation.
I met my now husband and he took meon a mastermind and I met all these
(05:57):
people that were working online andthey were making money online that had
no previous background in marketing.
They learned it.
And I said, I wanna do that.
I wanna be in Bali and workso I told Serge, hire me.
I'll help you with whatever you want.
But I want to travel the world.
And we decided to starta marketing agency.
That was the start of it.
(06:18):
So at the beginning we dida lot of lead generation.
We worked with, companies thatneeded appointments, new customers,
new clients, mortgage brokers,realtors, insurance lawyers.
And it went okay.
Okay, it's because we had the legionsystem in place, but we didn't have
the conversion system in place.
Or they didn't have theconversion system in place.
A lot of the projects workedokay, but then didn't work.
(06:39):
Well anymore.
Fast forward to us moving to BaliThailand and traveling a little bit.
We lost all of our clients.
We went very broke.
We tried a lot of thingsthat didn't work out.
Went to an agency.
We said, let's try e-comm again.
We invested a lot of money into products.
It didn't work out.
Built a hearing aid brand thatended up being successful.
(07:01):
It reached, seven figuresin the first year.
Then meta shut down our account.
We couldn't do ads anymore, and 70 80%of our revenue was coming from ads.
I had to figure out how to get saleswithout ads in the process of figuring
that out, I decided, there has to bea lot of companies that have the same
problem that either can't do ads orthey just can't, they're plateauing with
(07:24):
ads, they can't spend the same amountof money and get, 3, 4, 5, 6 x back.
That's when we reinvented the agencyand decided to work with scaling
brands diversifying traffic sources,whether that is influencer marketing,
Pinterest content, social media,email, marketing, you name it.
That was eight years backedinto a couple minutes.
Dr John Dentico (07:43):
Yeah I agree.
I can't tell you how many times I'vehad wonderful guests and perseverance.
Perseverance and the ability to takea hit and get back up again matters
so much in fact Now I am, when I talkpeople, about hiring and retaining
good people, what I'm pointing tonow is you hire people with heart.
(08:04):
And what I mean by heart peoplewho had persevered through
a difficult time.
Never took the victim mindset.
Sandra Kokotovic (08:12):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (08:12):
They just toughed it out, if you will and rose to the occasion
and are now doing extremely well.
I've had two guests thatwere in prison for two years,
Sandra Kokotovic (08:21):
Wow.
Dr John Dentico (08:22):
prison saved their lives,
Sandra Kokotovic (08:24):
And they turn it all around.
Dr John Dentico (08:25):
and then they turned it all around and now they're heads
of multimillion dollar businesses.
Sandra Kokotovic (08:30):
Amazing.
Dr John Dentico (08:31):
it's amazing to me.
You just shake your head andsay, these are cool people.
Sandra Kokotovic (08:34):
I love it.
Dr John Dentico (08:35):
they're the coolest,
Sandra Kokotovic (08:37):
I love it.
I agree with you.
You can learn skills.
Google ChatGPT there's so manyresources out there, but perseverance
in the mindset is something thathas to come from within you.
There are not a lot of hills I would dieon but if there's one thing that comes
close it would be the victim mindset.
I absolutely have a big problem with it.
Dr John Dentico (08:55):
Yeah, when everybody's had a tough life, you
can pretty much talk to anybody.
You could stand on the street corner.
Sandra Kokotovic (09:01):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (09:02):
people and be blown away by the adversity that they've
I'm agree with you a hundred percent.
let me ask you this question.
As a full-time digital nomad who haslived and worked in over 20 countries.
How has this lifestyle influencedyour approach to digital
marketing and business operations?
Sandra Kokotovic (09:26):
In so many ways, I don't know if our agency would be where
it is right now if we didn't travel.
Having to figure out where togo next and having to figure out
the system, I went to countrieswhere I didn't speak the language.
I didn't know the system.
I didn't know what areaswere better or not.
So I had to do a lot of research.
I had to take a chance and do alot of research being exposed to
(09:47):
different kinds of people, differentcultures, different mindsets.
When you live in Kitchener, Ontarioor Canada, which is a hundred
kilometers away from Toronto,
live with people that have the samemindset, even though there's a lot
of immigrants here, people fromdifferent backgrounds and cultures,
it's still the same mindset.
But when you go to Montenegro orSerbia or Italy people have different
(10:07):
lifestyles, different priorities.
So being exposed to different kindsof people, in my opinion, expand your
mind and expand your point of view.
And we were talking about that victimmindset, my husband is from Bosnia, we
visited most of Yugoslavia there wasa war that's how he came to Canada.
He was a refugee and talking to peopleand seeing how resilient they are
(10:28):
knowing they've been through war.
You walk the streets of survival andstill see bullets in the building.
You see the holes from the bulletsin the building, and you're
talking to people that have beenthrough war 20 something years ago.
They've rebuilt their lives.
Reminded me that I am not a victim.
I can choose not to be avictim I moved to Canada.
I lost my friends when I was 14, boohoo.
You know what I mean?
Or my business lost money.
(10:50):
Most businesses lose money.
Traveling, expanded my point of view.
It made me more resilient.
It made me more quick on my feet.
I had to problem solve.
There are a lot of timeswhen things didn't work out.
I was on my way to Mexico for aMastermind, and I got COVID I actually got
tested at the airport and they're like.
You got COVID.
I was in Germany and they didn'twanna send me back to Romania.
(11:11):
And I was, they're like, no,you have to go back to Canada.
And I'm like, no.
I'm like, my boyfriend is in Croatia.
I have to go back to Romania.
We ended up in Montenegro for a monthbecause my EU COVID pass was not accepted.
So I have to figure out a way, but Ifeel when you put yourself into stressful
situations you come out more resilientand you have to figure out a way.
You gotta do things, faster, betterwith more creativity, so for me,
(11:36):
traveling, gives me that opportunityto honestly step it up every time
Dr John Dentico (11:41):
Yeah.
It is that old saying thatwhich doesn't kill you makes you
stronger, and I think it's true.
How you weather a storm, how youget through it, there's that.
There is that other old sayingthat I love that says it's not how
many times you get knocked down,it's how many times you get up.
Sandra Kokotovic (11:56):
I agree
Dr John Dentico (11:57):
I believe opportunities are all over the
place, especially in the world of AI.
How do you see artificialintelligence impacting your work?
Sandra Kokotovic (12:07):
It's been a good ride.
When ChatGPT came out, I was a little bitafraid of it because I create content for
a living, like email marketing, socialmedia content, blog articles and so on.
I was thinking.
Why would people, hire someone likeus when they can't create their
social media posts on ChatGPT?
But then I remembered I was askingmyself the same question years
ago when I started the agency.
(12:28):
Why would people hire me whenthey can hire an intern or their
niece or nephew, someone from adifferent country who charges frankly
five, 10 times less than I do.
So we needed to embrace it becausewe realized that AI is here to stay.
And it was an interesting situation'cause some of our clients, left they
said, we're gonna give this a shot.
We're going to create our own emailcampaigns, our own content with AI.
(12:50):
A portion of them came back to usbecause they realized that creating
content is one piece of the puzzle.
The strategy, the experience, theexpertise, the wisdom you acquired
through years of working in thisindustry makes all the difference.
Plus having someone,that shows up every day.
We have the best interest at heart.
We've seen it, we've done it, so weeliminated the most mundane roles
(13:14):
and the most mechanical roles.
Content creation, even writing up emails.
We realized that with good enoughprompts it's enough to give it a
point form and then keep refining it.
So AI helped us grow because we hadtime to become better strategists,
better managers, to projectmanage a little bit better, to
spend more time with our clients.
We have weekly meetings now instead ofmonthly meetings, and we let the AI do
(13:39):
the mundane mechanical work, whetherthat is content creation, organizing
things in a spreadsheet or projectmanaging and connecting all the project
management app with Gmail and so on.
And we became, we had the opportunity tothink more and become better strategists
and I think it's helped us so much.
Dr John Dentico (13:59):
I agree.
It's helped me tremendously in thesense that it helps me clarify ideas.
And I think the key, is how you canrefine it with different prompts.
Sandra Kokotovic (14:10):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (14:11):
I was searching the internet the other day and now they're
hiring people called Prompt Engineers.
Sandra Kokotovic (14:17):
Yes.
Dr John Dentico (14:18):
They're paying those guys.
Sandra Kokotovic (14:19):
Do I even wanna know?
Am I in the right, line of work
Dr John Dentico (14:22):
they're paying prompt engineers north of $300,000 a year.
Sandra Kokotovic (14:27):
Amazing.
Dr John Dentico (14:27):
I think there's more to it than the I would use.
Sandra Kokotovic (14:29):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (14:30):
Certainly engineering based algorithm type prompts.
Sandra Kokotovic (14:33):
Yes.
Dr John Dentico (14:34):
probably, that makes more sense how do you get the
system to give you a solution toa particular technological issue.
Sandra Kokotovic (14:42):
Yeah,
Dr John Dentico (14:43):
problem.
It's very interesting.
You could do so much with it, giving it,Hey, here's the problem I'm facing, and
Sandra Kokotovic (14:48):
exactly.
Dr John Dentico (14:49):
That's the way I find that it really does help me.
But in the end, no matter how muchtechnology, it's always about the people,
Sandra Kokotovic (14:57):
Oh, I completely agree.
Having a dishwasher doesn't mean thatI don't need to take care of my dishes.
I'm a better host now because Idon't have to spend time my dishes.
When I have a party, I'll load 'em up inthe dishwasher, but it doesn't mean that
my house is magically clean all the time.
Dr John Dentico (15:14):
Yep.
You're absolutely right.
Hey, let me move on toanother question if i can?
Sandra Kokotovic (15:18):
Sure.
Dr John Dentico (15:18):
Can you share your perspective on the current state of
influencer or marketing and how e-commercebrands can effectively leverage it?
Sandra Kokotovic (15:31):
Yeah I've wrote articles that are upwards of 4,000 words on this.
I think that influencer marketingfrom a brand perspective
is largely misunderstood.
Working with influencer marketing over thelast four or five years, I've identified
quite a few reasons why influencermarketing doesn't work for brands.
It's misunderstood because bigbrands are using big influencers
(15:55):
on TikTok, on Instagram, onYouTube, and they work for reason.
Those influencers became who theybecame because they put in the work and
they have an audience but it createsbitterness from companies that say they
can't afford those big influencers.
A lot of those companies end upworking with misaligned influencers.
A lot of the feedback that I hear isinfluencer marketing doesn't work.
(16:15):
I sent stuff to an influencer theyposted, but they didn't make any sales.
And there is such a bigmisconception about what
influencer marketing does for you.
The first thing that brands haveto understand is that influencer
marketing is a traffic source.
You still have to convert to a sale.
You can use a Facebook ad, an Instagramad, you can use TikTok, you can use an
(16:36):
article, you can use an email campaignto drive traffic to your landing page,
to your website to whatever you areselling, you cannot put your entire sales
funnel into the hands of an influencer.
Of course.
If you're using a influencer thathas 5 million followers and they've
been doing this for years, they havea team that can help you with that.
But.
(16:56):
95% of influencers are not gonnado that, so what brands need to
understand is influencer marketing.
plays a big role in their marketingecosystem, but it is not the whole
sales funnel, when I'm looking at whyinfluencer marketing doesn't work, it's
usually because the brand doesn't actuallyknow what they want an influencer for.
They say they want sales, but ifyou don't have a process for sale,
(17:18):
how do you expect this influencer tosay, look at this product, go buy it.
But there's no process for converting it.
You need to have an influencerthat has the same audience as you.
You cannot have an influencer.
If you are looking at a beauty influencerwho does makeup, lipsticks, and
you're trying to sell, a phone case.
Maybe some of those peoplewill want a phone case.
The argument that everybodyhas a phone doesn't mean
(17:40):
they're gonna buy a phone case.
So you have to have an influencerthat is aligned with your audience.
Influencer marketingis a business contract.
Influencer, I'm gonna sendyou this package, this pr,
do whatever you want with it.
You have to control the narrativeof what's being said about
your company online, right?
So you need to have a contract in place.
You need to talk to the influencer andsay, okay, I'm gonna send you a package
(18:02):
worth a thousand dollars of products.
What I want out of thisis your candid review.
I want three videos, one posted onTikTok, one on Instagram, one on Facebook.
I want five photos and you have to tagus, and let us know when you can do it.
It is a contractual agreement.
A business transaction.
My stance is influencer marketingit is very misunderstood by
(18:24):
businesses, but when done it canwork really well for you as a brand.
It has to be done right
Dr John Dentico (18:29):
That was a phenomenal observation if you
are a writer of fiction books,
for example you want someinfluence, influencer.
to help you in that marketplace.
Stay in your lane in the manner of
Sandra Kokotovic (18:43):
exactly.
Dr John Dentico (18:44):
Stay in the lane of what you are selling and who can
help you make inroads in that area.
And I think the second thing thatis just so important is, just
filling the funnel is not enough.
You can fill the funnel all day.
The question is, can you convert
Sandra Kokotovic (19:02):
Exactly.
Dr John Dentico (19:02):
that which is in the funnel into an actual job or contract
and I think that's absolutely there.
There's more than justone step of gathering.
It's really about how do youtake that and then move it to the
next level, which is conversion.
Sandra Kokotovic (19:16):
Exactly.
Dr John Dentico (19:17):
So I absolutely agree with you a hundred percent.
How do you approach developingsocial media strategies for
e-commerce brands, and whatcommon pitfalls should they avoid?
Sandra Kokotovic (19:30):
Everything needs to have a strategy.
I'm a fan of trends.
I go on TikTok, I goon Instagram every day.
Trends are fun, but when you are lookingat a social media strategy as a brand, you
need to look at what that does for you asa brand and set the right expectations.
A brand, you are inlove with your product.
You created a product for areason, it solves a problem.
Hopefully it solves a problem.
(19:50):
It's better than competitors and so on.
Now, with you being someone in love withyour product, sometimes as a brand you
risk thinking that everybody thinks thesame way as you and you're not creating
a strategy that fits into your wholeecosystem, social media strategies, need
to align with your overall strategy.
So what are your goals?
What are your targets?
(20:11):
What is your brand voice?
What is your brand story?
How are you doing ads?
How are you doing your email marketing?
Then you gotta determine what socialmedia is going to do for you, is it
going to be purely organic and is itgoing to be there so it supports the ads?
For instance, if you're running alot of ads on Facebook and Instagram.
You'll know that not everybodyconverts to a visit to the website.
(20:32):
In between someone seeing yourcold ad and then going to the
website, they might say I wannasee what this company is all about.
You want to have the right informationon your Facebook and Instagram
feeds that converts that personinto going through a website.
Then you want to have a social mediastrategy focused on content creators and
influencers, and it is there to sell.
(20:53):
Are you looking to boost a lot of posts?
In that case, make sure thatyou are putting your dollars
where they're going to convert.
Now, social media marketing.
There's so much involved I'm trying tocompress this into a one minute spiel.
But the one thing I would say is.
Be mindful of your overall funnel.
Social media alone, it is very likelynot going to give you sales or not
(21:18):
all the sales you want because itis an organic piece of content.
When posting organically, you arecompeting for an expensive piece
of real estate called the feed.
You can control it with boosting it,you can control it with running ads,
you can control an email list, butsocial media, you can't control it.
So you cannot have those expectationsthat you're going to just scale
with organic social media.
(21:40):
In a social media strategy,think about the buyer psychology.
Not just the trends, butwhere are your buyers?
Who are your buyers?
Who's your target audience, andwhat do they need to know to
learn more about your brand?
And be convinced that yourbrand, your product, is the
right answer to their problems.
Think about the educationalcontent you need.
Maybe do some trending contentso you can, attract attention.
A little bit of promotionwhat's in it for them?
(22:02):
People go on social media, to waste time.
I do that pretty much every night.
I'm looking at TikTok when I'm workingout or if I'm truly done for the
night, but people go there to wastetime, if someone is there to waste
time, how do you grab their attention?
People go there to get educated.
If you go to get educated, how do youconvert their quick glance into aha.
(22:23):
Interesting.
I wanna learn more about this brand.
Social media is a strategy.
It's not just slapping some posts aboutyour brand and promoting your brand.
It has to fit into yourwhole marketing ecosystem, it
always goes back to the goals.
What are your goals with social media?
What are your goalswith content marketing?
How do you spend your marketingbudget, your ads, and how can
(22:45):
we fit social media in there?
Dr John Dentico (22:47):
It is very interesting.
I'm a big devotee, of DonMiller's StoryBrand marketing.
And let me just explain
And that is simply this.
I used to, I used at a websitethat said, okay, this is John
Dentico and this is what he does.
Nobody cares.
Nobody cares.
I learned exactly what you said.
(23:09):
You have to be able to solve a problem.
Why do people Google anything TheyGoogle it because they're in pain.
They have discomfort.
There's a question.
They're trying to find a remedyfor whatever it is, whether it's
fixing a washing machine to,training for a group of 40 people.
The key is start off with theproblem and then later on this is
(23:32):
how I might be able to help you.
I absolutely agree with you.
And I think the other thing that youpointed out, and I wanted to peel this
onion back a little bit if we can.
There are so many differentsocial media outlets,
Sandra Kokotovic (23:45):
Yes.
Dr John Dentico (23:45):
LinkedIn, Pininterest,,
Sandra Kokotovic (23:46):
Facebook.
Dr John Dentico (23:47):
I would think that certain social media outlets would
appeal to different marketplaces.
Is that correct
Sandra Kokotovic (23:56):
And I can tell you in my own experience I have been trying
to make TikTok content work for me fora couple years now, and I just can't.
The reason is I do not find thetime and I don't wanna find a
time to create trending content.
Now I do that for the brands we work withbecause the brands we work with are B2C.
At the end of the day,where are businesses?
They're on LinkedIn.
(24:17):
When I'm looking at the companies thatI'm working with, there are companies that
are already making, a few million dollars.
I am working with companies rightnow, making 20 million a year.
And I guarantee you that the ownerof that company, the guy that's been
running his company for 30 years andthey're at 20 million a year right now,
he's not looking at dances on TikTok.
Now, could that person go onTikTok to do research absolutely.
(24:39):
But I guarantee that guy is checkinghis LinkedIn messages a lot more than
he's checking his TikTok messages.
So for me, I've struggled with itbecause I'm a marketer with your
content, I have to be in all platforms.
And I realized no, because myleads, my sales, my contracts,
they're coming largely from.
LinkedIn and from email marketing,and I decided that I need to
(25:02):
be where my audience is now.
I am doing a lot of content on theside, and I post it on Pinterest,
Instagram and TikTok, but I don'tdo it with the expectation I'm going
to get business out of it, at leastnot for the projects I have right
now companies have to keep in mind.
You don't have to be on everysingle social media platform
or not to the same degree.
In fact, master one or two platformsfirst, and then sure, post that
(25:25):
content on the other platforms withoutthe expectation that is going to
bring you a lot of followers andengagement, but at least for SEO or
so, you have your brand name out there.
Once you master those one ortwo platforms, you can move on.
Because as a brand, unless you have thebudget to hire a team, there's no way
you can excel at Instagram Facebook andX and LinkedIn and Twitter at the, sorry.
(25:49):
And TikTok at the same time
Dr John Dentico (25:51):
I'd agree.
Focus and learn how to use it
Sandra Kokotovic (25:53):
exactly.
Dr John Dentico (25:54):
How to influence and expand your marketing on one.
For example.
Sandra Kokotovic (25:56):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (25:57):
I'm primarily on LinkedIn.
B2B, that kind of thing.
Agree with you.
I think that this idea that.
You're casting the net asfar as you possibly can in
so many different directions
You can cast the net wide on LinkedInyou can't cast the net wide on so many
different avenues that you lose focus
Sandra Kokotovic (26:18):
Exactly.
Dr John Dentico (26:19):
And absolutely.
You said some magic words.
One of the, my most favoritemagic word is strategy.
You can do all the tactics and peopleget concerned about doing all the
little tactical kinds of things, right?
But if you don't have an overallstrategy, this is who I am, this is
what I do, this is where I'm going.
Sandra Kokotovic (26:39):
exactly.
Dr John Dentico (26:40):
If you don't have a mission statement, if you don't
have a one sentence succinct.
Mission statement who you areand what you do and where in
that gap in the marketplace.
So we're in the niche in themarketplace you're trying to fulfill.
You're just wandering out there andyou're just hoping for the best.
I think you're absolutely correct on that.
We're getting close to the ends.
I want to ask you my world famous favoritequestion, I've asked it for people from
(27:05):
all over the world, and that is, ifyou had a magic wand and you could wave
it at any issue that you see in theworld in which you work what would that
issue be and why did you choose that?
Sandra Kokotovic (27:19):
Such a hard question.
If I had a magic wand to waveit at, one of the areas where I
work, it would be the mindset.
I feel that most.
businesses because of the mindset.
It's not because the product is not good.
It's not because the customersare not willing to pay the money.
It's because we're stuck inthis mindset of entitlement.
(27:40):
I'm not gonna spend money on Facebookas they should buy my product.
My product is the best.
Or sometimes it's the mindsetof perfectionism, right?
Like they're tripping overdollars to pick up pennies.
No, we cannot send email marketingout yet because we didn't have our.
Offer, fix done.
And they're like tangled up inall of these little details.
In the meantime, the nimblelittle guy from behind is running.
(28:02):
Sometimes, it is the victim mindset.
Why me instead of looking for a solution?
I find that all these strategies,tactics, they can be overcome.
You can design a better product,you can find a better product.
You can find people that arebetter at this job than you are.
There are so many resources,but it has to start here.
Your mindset carries you through yourbusiness and entrepreneurship world.
(28:24):
If the mindset is not there, you can havethe funding, the product, the people.
But it starts with you.
So if I had a magic wand, I would saytwo founders and business owners that
are not quite where they wanna be, thatare not, there are their peak, happy and
content and pride proud of themselves.
Say, change your mindset,surround yourself with
(28:45):
people that have the mindset.
Surround yourself with peoplethat are where you wanna go, or at
least in one area of their lives.
Do your meditation.
Looking within you.
Change your mindset because your mindsetis what starts everything, in my opinion.
Dr John Dentico (28:58):
I agree with you a hundred percent, and I think you have
to have that perseverance part of ittoo, the sense that, look, I'm not
gonna get there next week or next year,
Sandra Kokotovic (29:07):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (29:07):
I'm gonna get there.
I'm gonna get
Sandra Kokotovic (29:09):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (29:09):
I'm gonna learn.
Sandra Kokotovic (29:11):
Yes.
Dr John Dentico (29:11):
and I'm gonna push through it, and I'm gonna get there.
I just have to keep, the oldtortoise in the hare, right?
Be the tortoise.
Just one step at a time.
Nice and easy.
Keep moving.
Learn what works.
And just.
Keep pressing on eventuallyI believe you'll enjoy
Great success.
This has been a wonderfuljoy to have you here on the
(29:31):
Throttle Up Leadership Podcast.
I can't thank you enough for your time,all your hard work and your digital
nomadic traveling all over the worldand doing the job that you do and
helping companies achieve their goals.
It's a wonderful, challengethat you've accepted.
So I wish you all the successin the future and good health.
(29:52):
Thank you so much for being here today,
Sandra Kokotovic (29:53):
Thank you so much.
It's been an absolute pleasure andhopefully it's not our last collaboration.
Dr John Dentico (29:59):
Hopefully.
Thank you.
Welcome to the Throttle Up Leadership Podcast.
Our theme for 2025 is The Futureof Work: Meaning is the New Money!
In a world shaped by rapid innovation andconstant change the pursuit of purpose
and impact has never been more important.
I'm Dr John Dentico your host,bringing over 30 years of experience
(00:28):
in leadership, strategic thinkingand purpose-driven innovation.
Here we tackle the pressing challengesof our time-from the rise of
artificial intelligence to the growingneed for meaning in the workplace.
Together we'll uncover how leaderscan ethically integrate AI to enhance
decision-making and keep humanityat the heart of their organizations.
(00:51):
Remember amidst all thetechnological advancements in the
end, it's always about the people.
This podcast is your resource foractionable tools, thought provoking
discussions and inspiring stories.
It's time to go beyond leadershipdevelopment and focus on leadership
(01:11):
impact-creating workplaces where peoplethrive, innovation flourishes and
meaning truly becomes the new currency.
Thank you for joining me on this journey.
Now, let's Throttle Up anddive into today's episode.
Hello and welcome to theThrottle Up Leadership Podcast.
It's me Dr John Dentico I'mhappy you're here with us today.
(01:35):
With me is Sandra Kokotovic.
The co-founder and creative director ofSnap Advantage, a digital marketing agency
specializing in e-commerce brand growth.
With over a decade of experiencein digital marketing, Sandra has
a proven track record of elevatingbrands to market leadership positions.
(01:57):
Sandra embraces a location independentlifestyle as a full-time digital nomad.
Having lived and worked in over 20countries, she has successfully scaled
her digital marketing business to sevenfigures while exploring the world.
How cool is that?
Sandra frequently shares her expertisewith various platforms, including podcasts
(02:21):
and webinars where she discusses topicssuch as: influencer marketing, content
creation, automation, and effective socialmedia strategies for e-commerce brands.
I am truly pleased that sheis here joining me today.
Good morning, Sandra.
How are you?
Sandra Kokotovic (02:41):
Good morning.
What an intro.
Thank you so much.
Very excited to be here.
Dr John Dentico (02:46):
Great to have you here.
Branding and influencers.
You see it all every day.
Sandra, let me begin with thisquestion for you Tell me a bit about
Sandra Kokotovic (02:57):
Mm-hmm.
Dr John Dentico (02:58):
Where did you grow up and what were some of the
fundamental influences in your life?
Sandra Kokotovic (03:05):
Actually grew up in Romania in Eastern Europe,
and I moved to Canada in 2005.
So I've lived my entire life as, Idon't wanna say a split personality,
but half of the heart is thereand half of the heart is here.
And that's why I choseto go back on the road.
I feel like for me, beingstuck in one place is not it.
(03:25):
Eastern Europe is calling.
So when you were talking about mebeing in multiple countries and
working there, my goal in life.
In terms of influences in my life, thisis a very tough question and I don't
know if it is cliche to say the parents.
I know there's a lot of influencerscelebrities and people that I look up to,
authors and speakers who, whenever theycome out with a new book, I'll pick it up.
But I would say my parents, one daythey picked up their bags and two
(03:50):
kids and then they moved to Canada.
Somehow made it work.
My, Dad, is an engineer and he had to workwhatever jobs to put foot on the table.
He is a professor now, so he got hisPhD at 56 while working multiple jobs
my mom, went from being a PR workingwith government people to working
at Navy and then being fired becausetheir English was not good enough.
(04:12):
And then she ended up having similar toyou, she has podcasts and a. Romanian
newspaper, Romanian show on Rogers TV.
Again, there's a lot of influencers outthere to look up to, but the biggest
influence in my life has been my parents.
And what determined me to be, moresuccessful than I can averagely be was the
fact that my parents gave everything upto come to Canada for me and my brother.
(04:35):
And I can't take that lightly.
Dr John Dentico (04:37):
That's a great answer.
Wonderful.
Hey, listen I always say don't everbe afraid to learn something new.
Is a rule in my life.
I finished my doctorate when I was 49,
Sandra Kokotovic (04:47):
Wow.
Dr John Dentico (04:48):
We're gonna start again.
Try something different.
Sandra Kokotovic (04:50):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (04:50):
Very interesting doing that later in were a number of people that
were in my program were also starting.
That la much later in life.
Sandra Kokotovic (04:59):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (05:00):
It's an interesting journey to be honest about it.
Sandra Kokotovic (05:03):
I believe.
Dr John Dentico (05:03):
Let me move on what inspired you to co-found Snap
Advantage and what unique challengesdid you face during its inception?
Sandra Kokotovic (05:14):
So I didn't grow up thinking I'm going to be a
marketer and own a marketing agency.
That was not my answer whenthey were asking that in school.
But when I met my now husband nineyears ago, he was an online marketer.
I had no idea what that meant at the time.
All I knew is he was selling jewelryonline and he was working remotely.
I was working for the government.
(05:34):
Coming from Eastern Europe where5, 6, 7 weeks vacation a year is
the norm and the balance of lifeand working is very apparent.
In Canada, that was back when twoweeks was the norm, and then maybe
if you worked in a tech company, youwould get three weeks or four weeks.
So I said, I'm gonnawork for the government.
It's safe, it's secure.
Pay is good.
And I get vacation.
I met my now husband and he took meon a mastermind and I met all these
(05:57):
people that were working online andthey were making money online that had
no previous background in marketing.
They learned it.
And I said, I wanna do that.
I wanna be in Bali and workso I told Serge, hire me.
I'll help you with whatever you want.
But I want to travel the world.
And we decided to starta marketing agency.
That was the start of it.
(06:18):
So at the beginning we dida lot of lead generation.
We worked with, companies thatneeded appointments, new customers,
new clients, mortgage brokers,realtors, insurance lawyers.
And it went okay.
Okay, it's because we had the legionsystem in place, but we didn't have
the conversion system in place.
Or they didn't have theconversion system in place.
A lot of the projects workedokay, but then didn't work.
(06:39):
Well anymore.
Fast forward to us moving to BaliThailand and traveling a little bit.
We lost all of our clients.
We went very broke.
We tried a lot of thingsthat didn't work out.
Went to an agency.
We said, let's try e-comm again.
We invested a lot of money into products.
It didn't work out.
Built a hearing aid brand thatended up being successful.
(07:01):
It reached, seven figuresin the first year.
Then meta shut down our account.
We couldn't do ads anymore, and 70 80%of our revenue was coming from ads.
I had to figure out how to get saleswithout ads in the process of figuring
that out, I decided, there has to bea lot of companies that have the same
problem that either can't do ads orthey just can't, they're plateauing with
(07:24):
ads, they can't spend the same amountof money and get, 3, 4, 5, 6 x back.
That's when we reinvented the agencyand decided to work with scaling
brands diversifying traffic sources,whether that is influencer marketing,
Pinterest content, social media,email, marketing, you name it.
That was eight years backedinto a couple minutes.
Dr John Dentico (07:43):
Yeah I agree.
I can't tell you how many times I'vehad wonderful guests and perseverance.
Perseverance and the ability to takea hit and get back up again matters
so much in fact Now I am, when I talkpeople, about hiring and retaining
good people, what I'm pointing tonow is you hire people with heart.
(08:04):
And what I mean by heart peoplewho had persevered through
a difficult time.
Never took the victim mindset.
Sandra Kokotovic (08:12):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (08:12):
They just toughed it out, if you will and rose to the occasion
and are now doing extremely well.
I've had two guests thatwere in prison for two years,
Sandra Kokotovic (08:21):
Wow.
Dr John Dentico (08:22):
prison saved their lives,
Sandra Kokotovic (08:24):
And they turn it all around.
Dr John Dentico (08:25):
and then they turned it all around and now they're heads
of multimillion dollar businesses.
Sandra Kokotovic (08:30):
Amazing.
Dr John Dentico (08:31):
it's amazing to me.
You just shake your head andsay, these are cool people.
Sandra Kokotovic (08:34):
I love it.
Dr John Dentico (08:35):
they're the coolest,
Sandra Kokotovic (08:37):
I love it.
I agree with you.
You can learn skills.
Google ChatGPT there's so manyresources out there, but perseverance
in the mindset is something thathas to come from within you.
There are not a lot of hills I would dieon but if there's one thing that comes
close it would be the victim mindset.
I absolutely have a big problem with it.
Dr John Dentico (08:55):
Yeah, when everybody's had a tough life, you
can pretty much talk to anybody.
You could stand on the street corner.
Sandra Kokotovic (09:01):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (09:02):
people and be blown away by the adversity that they've
I'm agree with you a hundred percent.
let me ask you this question.
As a full-time digital nomad who haslived and worked in over 20 countries.
How has this lifestyle influencedyour approach to digital
marketing and business operations?
Sandra Kokotovic (09:26):
In so many ways, I don't know if our agency would be where
it is right now if we didn't travel.
Having to figure out where togo next and having to figure out
the system, I went to countrieswhere I didn't speak the language.
I didn't know the system.
I didn't know what areaswere better or not.
So I had to do a lot of research.
I had to take a chance and do alot of research being exposed to
(09:47):
different kinds of people, differentcultures, different mindsets.
When you live in Kitchener, Ontarioor Canada, which is a hundred
kilometers away from Toronto,
live with people that have the samemindset, even though there's a lot
of immigrants here, people fromdifferent backgrounds and cultures,
it's still the same mindset.
But when you go to Montenegro orSerbia or Italy people have different
(10:07):
lifestyles, different priorities.
So being exposed to different kindsof people, in my opinion, expand your
mind and expand your point of view.
And we were talking about that victimmindset, my husband is from Bosnia, we
visited most of Yugoslavia there wasa war that's how he came to Canada.
He was a refugee and talking to peopleand seeing how resilient they are
(10:28):
knowing they've been through war.
You walk the streets of survival andstill see bullets in the building.
You see the holes from the bulletsin the building, and you're
talking to people that have beenthrough war 20 something years ago.
They've rebuilt their lives.
Reminded me that I am not a victim.
I can choose not to be avictim I moved to Canada.
I lost my friends when I was 14, boohoo.
You know what I mean?
Or my business lost money.
(10:50):
Most businesses lose money.
Traveling, expanded my point of view.
It made me more resilient.
It made me more quick on my feet.
I had to problem solve.
There are a lot of timeswhen things didn't work out.
I was on my way to Mexico for aMastermind, and I got COVID I actually got
tested at the airport and they're like.
You got COVID.
I was in Germany and they didn'twanna send me back to Romania.
(11:11):
And I was, they're like, no,you have to go back to Canada.
And I'm like, no.
I'm like, my boyfriend is in Croatia.
I have to go back to Romania.
We ended up in Montenegro for a monthbecause my EU COVID pass was not accepted.
So I have to figure out a way, but Ifeel when you put yourself into stressful
situations you come out more resilientand you have to figure out a way.
You gotta do things, faster, betterwith more creativity, so for me,
(11:36):
traveling, gives me that opportunityto honestly step it up every time
Dr John Dentico (11:41):
Yeah.
It is that old saying thatwhich doesn't kill you makes you
stronger, and I think it's true.
How you weather a storm, how youget through it, there's that.
There is that other old sayingthat I love that says it's not how
many times you get knocked down,it's how many times you get up.
Sandra Kokotovic (11:56):
I agree
Dr John Dentico (11:57):
I believe opportunities are all over the
place, especially in the world of AI.
How do you see artificialintelligence impacting your work?
Sandra Kokotovic (12:07):
It's been a good ride.
When ChatGPT came out, I was a little bitafraid of it because I create content for
a living, like email marketing, socialmedia content, blog articles and so on.
I was thinking.
Why would people, hire someone likeus when they can't create their
social media posts on ChatGPT?
But then I remembered I was askingmyself the same question years
ago when I started the agency.
(12:28):
Why would people hire me whenthey can hire an intern or their
niece or nephew, someone from adifferent country who charges frankly
five, 10 times less than I do.
So we needed to embrace it becausewe realized that AI is here to stay.
And it was an interesting situation'cause some of our clients, left they
said, we're gonna give this a shot.
We're going to create our own emailcampaigns, our own content with AI.
(12:50):
A portion of them came back to usbecause they realized that creating
content is one piece of the puzzle.
The strategy, the experience, theexpertise, the wisdom you acquired
through years of working in thisindustry makes all the difference.
Plus having someone,that shows up every day.
We have the best interest at heart.
We've seen it, we've done it, so weeliminated the most mundane roles
(13:14):
and the most mechanical roles.
Content creation, even writing up emails.
We realized that with good enoughprompts it's enough to give it a
point form and then keep refining it.
So AI helped us grow because we hadtime to become better strategists,
better managers, to projectmanage a little bit better, to
spend more time with our clients.
We have weekly meetings now instead ofmonthly meetings, and we let the AI do
(13:39):
the mundane mechanical work, whetherthat is content creation, organizing
things in a spreadsheet or projectmanaging and connecting all the project
management app with Gmail and so on.
And we became, we had the opportunity tothink more and become better strategists
and I think it's helped us so much.
Dr John Dentico (13:59):
I agree.
It's helped me tremendously in thesense that it helps me clarify ideas.
And I think the key, is how you canrefine it with different prompts.
Sandra Kokotovic (14:10):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (14:11):
I was searching the internet the other day and now they're
hiring people called Prompt Engineers.
Sandra Kokotovic (14:17):
Yes.
Dr John Dentico (14:18):
They're paying those guys.
Sandra Kokotovic (14:19):
Do I even wanna know?
Am I in the right, line of work
Dr John Dentico (14:22):
they're paying prompt engineers north of $300,000 a year.
Sandra Kokotovic (14:27):
Amazing.
Dr John Dentico (14:27):
I think there's more to it than the I would use.
Sandra Kokotovic (14:29):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (14:30):
Certainly engineering based algorithm type prompts.
Sandra Kokotovic (14:33):
Yes.
Dr John Dentico (14:34):
probably, that makes more sense how do you get the
system to give you a solution toa particular technological issue.
Sandra Kokotovic (14:42):
Yeah,
Dr John Dentico (14:43):
problem.
It's very interesting.
You could do so much with it, giving it,Hey, here's the problem I'm facing, and
Sandra Kokotovic (14:48):
exactly.
Dr John Dentico (14:49):
That's the way I find that it really does help me.
But in the end, no matter how muchtechnology, it's always about the people,
Sandra Kokotovic (14:57):
Oh, I completely agree.
Having a dishwasher doesn't mean thatI don't need to take care of my dishes.
I'm a better host now because Idon't have to spend time my dishes.
When I have a party, I'll load 'em up inthe dishwasher, but it doesn't mean that
my house is magically clean all the time.
Dr John Dentico (15:14):
Yep.
You're absolutely right.
Hey, let me move on toanother question if i can?
Sandra Kokotovic (15:18):
Sure.
Dr John Dentico (15:18):
Can you share your perspective on the current state of
influencer or marketing and how e-commercebrands can effectively leverage it?
Sandra Kokotovic (15:31):
Yeah I've wrote articles that are upwards of 4,000 words on this.
I think that influencer marketingfrom a brand perspective
is largely misunderstood.
Working with influencer marketing over thelast four or five years, I've identified
quite a few reasons why influencermarketing doesn't work for brands.
It's misunderstood because bigbrands are using big influencers
(15:55):
on TikTok, on Instagram, onYouTube, and they work for reason.
Those influencers became who theybecame because they put in the work and
they have an audience but it createsbitterness from companies that say they
can't afford those big influencers.
A lot of those companies end upworking with misaligned influencers.
A lot of the feedback that I hear isinfluencer marketing doesn't work.
(16:15):
I sent stuff to an influencer theyposted, but they didn't make any sales.
And there is such a bigmisconception about what
influencer marketing does for you.
The first thing that brands haveto understand is that influencer
marketing is a traffic source.
You still have to convert to a sale.
You can use a Facebook ad, an Instagramad, you can use TikTok, you can use an
(16:36):
article, you can use an email campaignto drive traffic to your landing page,
to your website to whatever you areselling, you cannot put your entire sales
funnel into the hands of an influencer.
Of course.
If you're using a influencer thathas 5 million followers and they've
been doing this for years, they havea team that can help you with that.
But.
(16:56):
95% of influencers are not gonnado that, so what brands need to
understand is influencer marketing.
plays a big role in their marketingecosystem, but it is not the whole
sales funnel, when I'm looking at whyinfluencer marketing doesn't work, it's
usually because the brand doesn't actuallyknow what they want an influencer for.
They say they want sales, but ifyou don't have a process for sale,
(17:18):
how do you expect this influencer tosay, look at this product, go buy it.
But there's no process for converting it.
You need to have an influencerthat has the same audience as you.
You cannot have an influencer.
If you are looking at a beauty influencerwho does makeup, lipsticks, and
you're trying to sell, a phone case.
Maybe some of those peoplewill want a phone case.
The argument that everybodyhas a phone doesn't mean
(17:40):
they're gonna buy a phone case.
So you have to have an influencerthat is aligned with your audience.
Influencer marketingis a business contract.
Influencer, I'm gonna sendyou this package, this pr,
do whatever you want with it.
You have to control the narrativeof what's being said about
your company online, right?
So you need to have a contract in place.
You need to talk to the influencer andsay, okay, I'm gonna send you a package
(18:02):
worth a thousand dollars of products.
What I want out of thisis your candid review.
I want three videos, one posted onTikTok, one on Instagram, one on Facebook.
I want five photos and you have to tagus, and let us know when you can do it.
It is a contractual agreement.
A business transaction.
My stance is influencer marketingit is very misunderstood by
(18:24):
businesses, but when done it canwork really well for you as a brand.
It has to be done right
Dr John Dentico (18:29):
That was a phenomenal observation if you
are a writer of fiction books,
for example you want someinfluence, influencer.
to help you in that marketplace.
Stay in your lane in the manner of
Sandra Kokotovic (18:43):
exactly.
Dr John Dentico (18:44):
Stay in the lane of what you are selling and who can
help you make inroads in that area.
And I think the second thing thatis just so important is, just
filling the funnel is not enough.
You can fill the funnel all day.
The question is, can you convert
Sandra Kokotovic (19:02):
Exactly.
Dr John Dentico (19:02):
that which is in the funnel into an actual job or contract
and I think that's absolutely there.
There's more than justone step of gathering.
It's really about how do youtake that and then move it to the
next level, which is conversion.
Sandra Kokotovic (19:16):
Exactly.
Dr John Dentico (19:17):
So I absolutely agree with you a hundred percent.
How do you approach developingsocial media strategies for
e-commerce brands, and whatcommon pitfalls should they avoid?
Sandra Kokotovic (19:30):
Everything needs to have a strategy.
I'm a fan of trends.
I go on TikTok, I goon Instagram every day.
Trends are fun, but when you are lookingat a social media strategy as a brand, you
need to look at what that does for you asa brand and set the right expectations.
A brand, you are inlove with your product.
You created a product for areason, it solves a problem.
Hopefully it solves a problem.
(19:50):
It's better than competitors and so on.
Now, with you being someone in love withyour product, sometimes as a brand you
risk thinking that everybody thinks thesame way as you and you're not creating
a strategy that fits into your wholeecosystem, social media strategies, need
to align with your overall strategy.
So what are your goals?
What are your targets?
(20:11):
What is your brand voice?
What is your brand story?
How are you doing ads?
How are you doing your email marketing?
Then you gotta determine what socialmedia is going to do for you, is it
going to be purely organic and is itgoing to be there so it supports the ads?
For instance, if you're running alot of ads on Facebook and Instagram.
You'll know that not everybodyconverts to a visit to the website.
(20:32):
In between someone seeing yourcold ad and then going to the
website, they might say I wannasee what this company is all about.
You want to have the right informationon your Facebook and Instagram
feeds that converts that personinto going through a website.
Then you want to have a social mediastrategy focused on content creators and
influencers, and it is there to sell.
(20:53):
Are you looking to boost a lot of posts?
In that case, make sure thatyou are putting your dollars
where they're going to convert.
Now, social media marketing.
There's so much involved I'm trying tocompress this into a one minute spiel.
But the one thing I would say is.
Be mindful of your overall funnel.
Social media alone, it is very likelynot going to give you sales or not
(21:18):
all the sales you want because itis an organic piece of content.
When posting organically, you arecompeting for an expensive piece
of real estate called the feed.
You can control it with boosting it,you can control it with running ads,
you can control an email list, butsocial media, you can't control it.
So you cannot have those expectationsthat you're going to just scale
with organic social media.
(21:40):
In a social media strategy,think about the buyer psychology.
Not just the trends, butwhere are your buyers?
Who are your buyers?
Who's your target audience, andwhat do they need to know to
learn more about your brand?
And be convinced that yourbrand, your product, is the
right answer to their problems.
Think about the educationalcontent you need.
Maybe do some trending contentso you can, attract attention.
A little bit of promotionwhat's in it for them?
(22:02):
People go on social media, to waste time.
I do that pretty much every night.
I'm looking at TikTok when I'm workingout or if I'm truly done for the
night, but people go there to wastetime, if someone is there to waste
time, how do you grab their attention?
People go there to get educated.
If you go to get educated, how do youconvert their quick glance into aha.
(22:23):
Interesting.
I wanna learn more about this brand.
Social media is a strategy.
It's not just slapping some posts aboutyour brand and promoting your brand.
It has to fit into yourwhole marketing ecosystem, it
always goes back to the goals.
What are your goals with social media?
What are your goalswith content marketing?
How do you spend your marketingbudget, your ads, and how can
(22:45):
we fit social media in there?
Dr John Dentico (22:47):
It is very interesting.
I'm a big devotee, of DonMiller's StoryBrand marketing.
And let me just explain
And that is simply this.
I used to, I used at a websitethat said, okay, this is John
Dentico and this is what he does.
Nobody cares.
Nobody cares.
I learned exactly what you said.
(23:09):
You have to be able to solve a problem.
Why do people Google anything TheyGoogle it because they're in pain.
They have discomfort.
There's a question.
They're trying to find a remedyfor whatever it is, whether it's
fixing a washing machine to,training for a group of 40 people.
The key is start off with theproblem and then later on this is
(23:32):
how I might be able to help you.
I absolutely agree with you.
And I think the other thing that youpointed out, and I wanted to peel this
onion back a little bit if we can.
There are so many differentsocial media outlets,
Sandra Kokotovic (23:45):
Yes.
Dr John Dentico (23:45):
LinkedIn, Pininterest,,
Sandra Kokotovic (23:46):
Facebook.
Dr John Dentico (23:47):
I would think that certain social media outlets would
appeal to different marketplaces.
Is that correct
Sandra Kokotovic (23:56):
And I can tell you in my own experience I have been trying
to make TikTok content work for me fora couple years now, and I just can't.
The reason is I do not find thetime and I don't wanna find a
time to create trending content.
Now I do that for the brands we work withbecause the brands we work with are B2C.
At the end of the day,where are businesses?
They're on LinkedIn.
(24:17):
When I'm looking at the companies thatI'm working with, there are companies that
are already making, a few million dollars.
I am working with companies rightnow, making 20 million a year.
And I guarantee you that the ownerof that company, the guy that's been
running his company for 30 years andthey're at 20 million a year right now,
he's not looking at dances on TikTok.
Now, could that person go onTikTok to do research absolutely.
(24:39):
But I guarantee that guy is checkinghis LinkedIn messages a lot more than
he's checking his TikTok messages.
So for me, I've struggled with itbecause I'm a marketer with your
content, I have to be in all platforms.
And I realized no, because myleads, my sales, my contracts,
they're coming largely from.
LinkedIn and from email marketing,and I decided that I need to
(25:02):
be where my audience is now.
I am doing a lot of content on theside, and I post it on Pinterest,
Instagram and TikTok, but I don'tdo it with the expectation I'm going
to get business out of it, at leastnot for the projects I have right
now companies have to keep in mind.
You don't have to be on everysingle social media platform
or not to the same degree.
In fact, master one or two platformsfirst, and then sure, post that
(25:25):
content on the other platforms withoutthe expectation that is going to
bring you a lot of followers andengagement, but at least for SEO or
so, you have your brand name out there.
Once you master those one ortwo platforms, you can move on.
Because as a brand, unless you have thebudget to hire a team, there's no way
you can excel at Instagram Facebook andX and LinkedIn and Twitter at the, sorry.
(25:49):
And TikTok at the same time
Dr John Dentico (25:51):
I'd agree.
Focus and learn how to use it
Sandra Kokotovic (25:53):
exactly.
Dr John Dentico (25:54):
How to influence and expand your marketing on one.
For example.
Sandra Kokotovic (25:56):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (25:57):
I'm primarily on LinkedIn.
B2B, that kind of thing.
Agree with you.
I think that this idea that.
You're casting the net asfar as you possibly can in
so many different directions
You can cast the net wide on LinkedInyou can't cast the net wide on so many
different avenues that you lose focus
Sandra Kokotovic (26:18):
Exactly.
Dr John Dentico (26:19):
And absolutely.
You said some magic words.
One of the, my most favoritemagic word is strategy.
You can do all the tactics and peopleget concerned about doing all the
little tactical kinds of things, right?
But if you don't have an overallstrategy, this is who I am, this is
what I do, this is where I'm going.
Sandra Kokotovic (26:39):
exactly.
Dr John Dentico (26:40):
If you don't have a mission statement, if you don't
have a one sentence succinct.
Mission statement who you areand what you do and where in
that gap in the marketplace.
So we're in the niche in themarketplace you're trying to fulfill.
You're just wandering out there andyou're just hoping for the best.
I think you're absolutely correct on that.
We're getting close to the ends.
I want to ask you my world famous favoritequestion, I've asked it for people from
(27:05):
all over the world, and that is, ifyou had a magic wand and you could wave
it at any issue that you see in theworld in which you work what would that
issue be and why did you choose that?
Sandra Kokotovic (27:19):
Such a hard question.
If I had a magic wand to waveit at, one of the areas where I
work, it would be the mindset.
I feel that most.
businesses because of the mindset.
It's not because the product is not good.
It's not because the customersare not willing to pay the money.
It's because we're stuck inthis mindset of entitlement.
(27:40):
I'm not gonna spend money on Facebookas they should buy my product.
My product is the best.
Or sometimes it's the mindsetof perfectionism, right?
Like they're tripping overdollars to pick up pennies.
No, we cannot send email marketingout yet because we didn't have our.
Offer, fix done.
And they're like tangled up inall of these little details.
In the meantime, the nimblelittle guy from behind is running.
(28:02):
Sometimes, it is the victim mindset.
Why me instead of looking for a solution?
I find that all these strategies,tactics, they can be overcome.
You can design a better product,you can find a better product.
You can find people that arebetter at this job than you are.
There are so many resources,but it has to start here.
Your mindset carries you through yourbusiness and entrepreneurship world.
(28:24):
If the mindset is not there, you can havethe funding, the product, the people.
But it starts with you.
So if I had a magic wand, I would saytwo founders and business owners that
are not quite where they wanna be, thatare not, there are their peak, happy and
content and pride proud of themselves.
Say, change your mindset,surround yourself with
(28:45):
people that have the mindset.
Surround yourself with peoplethat are where you wanna go, or at
least in one area of their lives.
Do your meditation.
Looking within you.
Change your mindset because your mindsetis what starts everything, in my opinion.
Dr John Dentico (28:58):
I agree with you a hundred percent, and I think you have
to have that perseverance part of ittoo, the sense that, look, I'm not
gonna get there next week or next year,
Sandra Kokotovic (29:07):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (29:07):
I'm gonna get there.
I'm gonna get
Sandra Kokotovic (29:09):
Yeah.
Dr John Dentico (29:09):
I'm gonna learn.
Sandra Kokotovic (29:11):
Yes.
Dr John Dentico (29:11):
and I'm gonna push through it, and I'm gonna get there.
I just have to keep, the oldtortoise in the hare, right?
Be the tortoise.
Just one step at a time.
Nice and easy.
Keep moving.
Learn what works.
And just.
Keep pressing on eventuallyI believe you'll enjoy
Great success.
This has been a wonderfuljoy to have you here on the
(29:31):
Throttle Up Leadership Podcast.
I can't thank you enough for your time,all your hard work and your digital
nomadic traveling all over the worldand doing the job that you do and
helping companies achieve their goals.
It's a wonderful, challengethat you've accepted.
So I wish you all the successin the future and good health.
(29:52):
Thank you so much for being here today,
Sandra Kokotovic (29:53):
Thank you so much.
It's been an absolute pleasure andhopefully it's not our last collaboration.
Dr John Dentico (29:59):
Hopefully.
Thank you.
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