Are You Social Enough? (How Profitable is Your Customer Journey)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lance Hood (FranPro) (00:00):
Hi everybody, welcome.
Today we have Corey Cottenoir,COO of Social Made Simple, and
we're just going to grab some ofhis insights.
Corey, welcome to the call.

Corey Cotnoir (SocialMade (00:10):
Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.

Corey.
First thing, what do you thinkis the most important thing that
we could discuss when it comesto local marketing?
What should people know?

Corey Cotnoir (SocialMadeS (00:23):
Yeah , that's a fantastic question.
I think the biggest thing andit's really honestly a
misconception and a challenge toget through the minds of local
business owners which isauthenticity in the social media
marketing space Just socialmedia in general, not
necessarily even considering itmarketing.
What I mean by that is oftenwe'll work with brands and

(00:44):
owners small business owners andfranchisee owners who want that
polished, final, veryprofessional look and feel to
their videos, their photographs,your people in store.
It needs to feel like it wasvery well done.
But interestingly, that's nothow consumers behave and want to
consume their social media.

(01:05):
They want authenticity andoriginality and they want to
feel like the brands and thepeople behind the brands that
they're going the restaurants,they're going and eating at the
stores, they're going to buytheir products from that.
The people there aretrustworthy, that they like them
, that they're people and thatthey feel like they can connect
to them.
So when we look at data almostevery single time, when we look

(01:27):
at the highest performingcontent or ad campaigns that we
run and that we manage, the coresource of content and topics
behind what we're posting andpromoting come from that
localized we call ituser-generated content.
So it could be a person in astore.
That's just like taking aselfie and saying fantastic

(01:48):
dinner, that type of consumermarketing.
Or even an owner taking a photoof the employees happy at the
end of a shift in the back ofthe back of the store.
That's the type of stuff thatworks and resonates really well
and, like I said, a lot ofpeople are a little bit allergic
to it.
They think, no, this isn'tpolished enough, it's got to be
put through Photoshop with somefilters on it and some brand

(02:10):
logos put on it, and that reallyis not the truth.
So that's the thing that Ithink stands out the most.
There's a lot more layers to it, of course, but I would just
encourage anyone listening totry to knock down that
perception you have of whatmarketing is today, especially
in the social media space.
I'm not recommending yourwebsite be unprofessional or
print marketing and things likethat, but social is quick, hit,

(02:30):
really really quick.
People scrolling through theirphone.
They don't have a lot ofattention span on it, so
definitely don't overthink whatyou're doing and putting
yourself out there.

Yeah, because real is easy.
You just do it.
You don't have to reshoot it100 times and people are very
adept at picking out.
What do you say posed realitylike something that's been
organized as real, but it's notso.

Corey Cotnoir (SocialMade (02:57):
Right .
Yeah, that's exactly right.
It doesn't mean those thingsdon't work.
We sprinkle them into basicallyevery single thing that we do.
We'll have a lawn care brandwhere they have a photograph of
a guy cutting the lawn wearingthe brand's polo and it's
professional, it's well done,the grass is very green, All

(03:18):
that stuff matters.
But even in that example like abefore and after photo taken
from a cell phone by the guy whojust cut the grass, of the
before and after that tends tooutperform the professionally
staged photography and thingslike that.
So yeah, the posing works, ithas its place and we need that
type of content in order to makesure we have the diversity of

(03:39):
assets but really the authenticlocal feel.
That's what we're looking for.

And what is the difference for people who
are listening from working witha general SEO company versus a
local SEO?
Like having that specialist?

Yeah , so general, you know, not
having the local feel like Ijust said.
You know, the one of the bigelements there would be only
having that corporatized, verypolished, almost stock image
like approach to what you'regetting out of the service.
The most important thing,though, I would say when you're
not local, is you don't havegranular enough data being

(04:22):
supported and backed in yourcampaigns and in your efforts.
Even though a brand that mighthave 500 locations, the product
marketing message, the core, youknow, target segment, a lot of
that is going to be the same andthere's going to be a ton of
overlap.
But the fringe, you know, wherethere isn't overlap, where
maybe this is a college town andbecause of that the target

(04:44):
skews slightly younger, we'reable to dig into that stuff and
make sure that we understandokay.
So let's lean harder into theassets that feature you know
college kids more in them thanthey do a more senior audience.
So it's that type of stuff thaton a local level, you don't get
.
If you're just saying, blast outa corporate, nationwide type of

(05:05):
marketing campaign, sometimesit misses 5 to 10 to 20 to 30%
of a marketplace's targetsegment because it doesn't adopt
any of that locality that'sreally necessary across.
You know every geo is different, every market is different, etc
.
Etc.
So that's where we see the mostsuccess.
If we can improve a campaign 5to 10% in a market, you know a

(05:26):
cost per lead or a cost peracquisition might go from being
unbearable to being perfect.
So it really can make up thedifference between whether
marketing investment works foryou or not, just by having the
local approach versus.
You know the blanket statementacross a corporate campaign.

What would be the components of an
effective local marketingcampaign?

Yeah , I mean I think I've touched on
a few of them.
I would say making sure thatthere's authenticity to you know
the local market, what makesyou unique in your marketplace.
Examples of that could includeconnecting with the community.
Are there local sports teams?
We see a lot of, for example,quick service restaurant brands

(06:05):
we work with that thrive onrunning promos and sales and
specials around big you know,youth sports tournaments and
trying to connect to thecommunity in ways like that.
Are there sports teams that arehaving a playoff run and can
you make promos and specialsaround that?
So it's really adopting thatsense of community.

(06:26):
A lot of times people look atfranchises as the opposite of
that.
They look at the smallbusinesses on Main Street as the
local brands.
They don't think of the youknow, the McDonald's and the
subway as being localrestaurants.
So if there's a bit of a hurdleto climb over for the
franchisees and local markets,and that's the best way to do
that, like I said, is to reallyadopt the community and dig into

(06:49):
it and don't be, you know, numbto the idea that we don't need
to have just this corporate feelof just pushing out our
corporate branded content andassets.
So yeah, it's that authenticity.
And then, like I said, theother key component to good
strategic local marketing isknowing you know what is
different and what is uniqueabout your local area and making

(07:12):
sure that we have that or youhave that in your own
advertising campaigns and don'tjust default to you know a brand
, mission statement and thingslike that.
Make sure you understand yourlocal audience.

Right and, from your opinion, what social
media companies do you thinkpeople should be working with?
Like you know, LinkedIn,Twitter.
How does it make so?
You have corporate and then youhave the local franchisees, and
I think that that might be alittle different.

Yeah , it definitely is.
You know there's still going tobe some constants where it's.
I would say the short answerfor you is it's more brand
dependent.
Are you a B2B brand?
If so, obviously LinkedIn is apowerful network.
Are you B2C?
And if so, you want to be wherethe consumers are on some of
the more highly used networks,depending on your audience
Instagram, tiktok, facebook,twitter, places like that.

(08:02):
I would say.
To go into a bit more detail,we specialize especially in
Facebook and Instagram.
That's where most of oursuccess comes through.
We get a lot of questions aboutplatforms like TikTok.
Obviously, it's the most kindof buzzwordy.
It's the one people are mostcurious about.
It's really, really challengingfor local businesses to

(08:22):
advertise on TikTok for tworeasons.
One, you need to be able tocreate original content,
original video, creative, whichis incredibly challenging to
churn out high volumes andconstant volumes of video
content or expensive to paysomeone to do it for you.
And then, secondarily, it'svery expensive to advertise.
There's minimums of thousandsof dollars per month.

(08:42):
You have to spend and just addspend in order to get into the
TikTok ad platform.
So for that reason, we don'treally recommend it.
We don't push businesses wework with into TikTok, but again
, it could be perfectly suitedfor a brand that might be kind
of a very fashion forward trendy.
They just might need to bethere.
They might need to make thatinvestment.

(09:03):
So, yeah, I think you kind ofdraw the Venn diagram.
Where most brands will meet inthe middle, it's going to be
Facebook and Instagram.
The largest, most diverse setof audiences is going to be
there.
Instagram is very compelling inthat they have a lot of
Facebooks that are owned,obviously, by Meta.
They have a lot of Facebook'sfunctionality in terms of their
ads, so you can create highlytargeted, highly effective

(09:26):
campaigns on Instagram and youtend to also get that younger
audience there, where people areusing Instagram in a great way.
Facebook nowadays tends to skewa little bit older in terms of
their audience.
The youngest generations arenot using it quite as much, so
that's something to keep in mind.
But it is still the mosteffective social marketing
platform when it comes toadvertising for businesses from,

(09:49):
like, an affordability and aperformance perspective.
And then, like I said, linkedinis great for B2B.
Twitter is obviously in themiddle of quite a historic
revamp.
I think it's too early to knowwhere things will shake out for
them.
I wouldn't, generally speaking,recommend Twitter for many
advertisers outside of brands in, like, the media space or who
might have a really uniquemarketing campaign that they

(10:11):
want to push out to a largeaudience.
But it's not great for calls toaction, not great for getting
people to take action on a typeof campaign.
It is great for getting amessage out there in front of a
large, a large body of audience.
So that's a general summary,I'd say, like I said.
I think the short answer,though, is it is pretty brand
dependent and brand specific,based on, you know, the client's
target segment.

Right Right, when you work with brands
and they're struggling a little.
What are some of thecommonalities that you notice
with brands that are struggling?

Yeah , great.
So I think, when it comes tostruggling with social
advertising so getting resultsfrom campaigns I think one of
the things that we often see isa misconception and
misunderstanding of what socialadvertising is at its core.
It's not a person walkingthrough your front door and
saying, hey, I'm interested orI'm here to buy something off

(11:04):
the menu.
It's a person who wasn't evenlooking for your business or
your services.
They were mining their ownbusiness, browsing their social
media network, probably tryingto kill time or consume some
mindless topics that really haveno pertinence to what you're
offering them.
So that is something that isoften lost on advertisers and

(11:24):
when they get results, when theymight get a lead in that space,
understand this is about as topof funnel as it's going to get
when it comes to a lead.
This wasn't a person who wasproactively seeking out your
services.
That doesn't mean they aren'tready.
I like to use myself as anexample.
I'm a homeowner and I'm in needof some flooring projects.
I bought an old home.

(11:45):
We need a lot of work done onit.
We work with a large flooringfranchise brand and if you think
about the consumer who islikely going to sign up for a
franchise or a local flooringcompany and get a project done.
They're unlikely to see an ad onInstagram and have a guy come
the next day and install newflooring a week later.
They're probably going to taketheir time.
They're going to vet differentcompanies in their market.

(12:09):
They're going to get differentquotes.
They're going to work withfamily members to make sure
they're choosing the rightflooring is at the right timing
to have the money for this.
So that's going to take sometime.
You have to understand thebuyer's journey, the life cycle
of that lead, so, more oftenthan not, to return to the
original question and give us asynced answer.
Brands that are struggling insocial advertising, I think, are

(12:30):
just not set up correctly tomanage that kind of top of
funnel social media marketingresults.
And once they make adjustmentsto their follow up, their
outreach, how they're convertingthose sales, they tend to start
to paint a better picture interms of how their results are
and how they're evaluating theirperformance.

Right, and I've seen some marketing
companies that they just aren'tpaying attention, I think, to
conversion or keywords, likethey're just marketing on
general blanket keywords andwasting people's money, or they
over hammer it.
Like, as an example, there's asolar company that keeps
advertising on YouTube and Iwould never work with that

(13:13):
company because I've seen thatad probably a thousand times.
No joke, and it's like there'sno way I would do business.
So it's like some of theselittle things that they don't
think about because they'rewasting money and they're over
hammering it and they're justblowing people out.
What's your thoughts on yourexperience with that kind of
stuff?

Yeah , that's a great question.
I mean, I'm in the same boat.
I think most people are.
It's the same thing with TVcommercials.
I think I get so sick and tiredof seeing the same TV
commercials over and over andover again on loop, and it gets
to the point where you'recompletely burnt out.
You have now a negativeassociation with that brand in
your mind and the next time theypop up you're not likely to do
business.
So the answer is really simple.

(13:54):
It's a metric called frequency.
Frequency measures how often aperson has seen your message or
your marketing campaign.
So that's something our teampays very, very close attention
to.
Frequency kind of has what Iwould call a sweet spot.
If you don't serve it enough,they're unlikely to take action.
If you serve it too much, youhave what you're talking about,
where they begin a negativeassociation with your brand and

(14:16):
with your campaign.
So there is a sweet spot to itwhere you kind of have that,
that graph that will go up andgo down, where performance is
going to be a little too lowuntil frequency gets high enough
.
Something like two to three isusually.
For example, a person needs tosee an ad two to three times in
order to get that kind of sweetspot of them taking action on it
Once you get to territoriesyou're talking about, where
you're 10, 15, 20, that's justbad marketing.

(14:38):
It's just sort of what we'llcall set it and forget it, kind
of lazy.
You turn a campaign on and youjust let it run and you don't
really optimize, you don't checkin on it, you don't refresh it,
you don't change the target.
So that's really common.
That's what you get in a lot ofsort of low priced offerings
where they'll go sign up for aservice.
They'll turn a campaign on foryou Might work coming out of the
gates, but then you have whatyou have, which would be a

(15:00):
pretty damaging long termlasting impact.
So I definitely understandwhere you're coming from.
It's not fun to see those ads.

Yeah Well, so can you kind of explain in
your thought process and I knowthis would be different for your
different clients, but what iskind of what you view as the
different components of thecustomer journey?

Yeah .
So I think the key tounderstand here that will be
very specific to the brand andthe customer and kind of what is
it?
The product or service thatthey're intending to purchase.
But, like I said, the key thingto understand from a social
perspective is it is not wherethe person is attempting to take
action.
So, more often than not, whatwe need to do is find a way to

(15:42):
sort of jam a social mediamarketing message somewhere
along their journey.
So, for example, in a spacewhere we'll call it like home
services, a space where lead genis typically the buyer journey,
a person says, hey, I'minterested in learning more,
here's my information, let'stalk and let's learn more.
We can be early on in thatprocess and get you that lead.

(16:03):
But we can also, in socialmarketing, retarget that person
so maybe they become a lead ormaybe they go to your website
because they're so early thatthey're they googled it and
they're just vetting thedifferent options in their area.
We can then make sure we'regetting in front of that person
as they continue to browsesocial and they continue to look

(16:24):
at narrow down list of options.
So the buyer journey is reallyreally custom and unique to
every brand and every productand service.
That's part of what we do upfront in building out a strategy
is we try to understand how areyour consumers finding you?
How much time are they spendingbefore they convert for you?
Because really, where we go interms of getting ads out in

(16:46):
front of them and getting our,our efforts out in front of them
is going to be consistent withwhere their eyeballs are at what
stage of that journey.
So it's a great question Ithink a lot of you know.
One thing we do see is a lotlike I was mentioning earlier.
A lot of brands maybe don'thave the right data on that.
We it's sort of surprising andI understand why, but we ask a

(17:07):
lot of businesses you knowwhat's the lifetime value of a
customer to you, or how long isyour sales cycle or how long
does the customer stick around,and a lot of times there's an
unreliable data on that.
We don't get good answers orhave good insight, which I am.
Again, I understand it's aresource intensive exercise to
get there, but it can be soimperative to understanding.

(17:27):
How do I, how do I build areally strategic, well thought
out marketing campaign withouthaving that data and that
insight?
You're kind of throwing darts,you know, blind in some ways and
at some points of the journey.
So, yeah, it's a thing that wespend a lot of time and a lot of
research on and it's reallyimperative to getting the
strategy right and understandingthat journey.

Right, and I know that you've talked about
this, you've touched on thisalready, but to wrap it up into
one questions for people tounderstand it, what can people
do to increase engagement withpeople who are seeing this, this
, the social posts, or this,this messaging and what kind of
like decreases engagement?

Yeah , so I did touch on it earlier.
In terms of the authenticity tothe content, I'll take this in
a bit of a different direction,though.
Nowadays.
So the authenticity is sort ofwhat is in the content, what is
the core theme of the messaging.
But you can do that all youwant.
You can make it the mostauthentic, creative, unique,
funny, whatever your brand is inyour market and still fail to

(18:34):
get engagement and fail to geteyeballs.
And the reason is socialnowadays really kills organic,
organic impressions.
They 10 years ago, if you wereon Facebook or other social
networks, you created a businesspage, you grew your page
following to hundreds orthousands and you would just
make posts and they would beseen by hundreds of people with

(18:54):
tons of interactions.
Nowadays, your actual reach isless than 1% on your pages.
So that means if you have 100page followers on your business
page and you make a post, aboutone person is going to see that
post.
So what we actually do is weautomatically boost all content
efforts that we have in place.
We don't work with brands forthe most part outside of strange

(19:17):
circumstances where we don'thave at least just a $35 a month
budget behind a boosted postcampaign.
We do all that completelyautomatic.
We have our platform that boostposts for you when they're
scheduled out.
But really that's the simpleanswer You're going to go from
getting one person to see thatpost to thousands to see that
post just from spendingliterally just over a dollar a

(19:40):
day and boosting that content.
So that'd be my advice foranyone that's not working with
us and trying to do itthemselves Carve out literally
30, 50 bucks a month to dedicateto boosting content.
It doesn't even need to be abig strategic call to action
driven campaign.
If you just want people to seeyour brand, see your message,
see a fun event maybe that youheld, and you want people to

(20:01):
sort of interact and share withtheir friends, I would recommend
that spending small amounts ofmoney to make sure your content
gets out in front of people,because the social platforms
just kill it on purpose nowadaysso they can get a little more
money.

Right, and you know one of the things that
I found very interesting.
So when I would talk to peopleabout brands, I would, I would
look for images, because I'mtrying to describe the inside
and the outside of a business,right?
So if it's a brick and mortar,people that want to own a
business.
They want to see what it lookslike on the outside.
They want to see what it lookslike on the inside.

(20:32):
If it's got food, they want tosee the food.
And if it's you know, or ifit's a service you know, look at
.
They need to get their mindaround it.
And so many people they don'treally take the time to take the
pictures they need to take,like I'm surprised.
And then if they do show it,they might show a grand opening
before it opens.
Well, if I'm a business owner,my feeling is this I'm going to

(20:56):
have an emotional feeling oflook at this nice, expensive
store and I don't see anycustomers in there.
I'm thinking I might be goingbroke.
And some people get it wherethey do their grand opening
shots and they have it wherethey show people filling the
store and lined up out the door.
Me, as a business owner,personally, that's what I want
to get into.
And people just aren't thinkingthat or they won't have

(21:18):
pictures of their food items orthey won't have professionally
done pictures of their fooditems, which does, you know,
makes it look more delicious andit wraps your mind around what
it is you're going to be doingso with these different
businesses and they put that outon.
Usually you know their Facebookor their Twitter or Instagram
or whatever.
That is like, so important,like what have you guys noticed

(21:41):
about?
Like these assets that describethe company and describe the
experience, that are or are notbeing produced?

Yeah , it's a great point and it's a
challenging topic because Ithink a lot of it comes down to
a person's sort of penchant forwanting to take photographs and
willingness to be in photographsand be in that mindset.
Admittedly, I'm someone who'snot.
You know, I go on vacation.
I'm not snapping photos.
My wife's always like, hey, wegot to get a picture, got to get
a picture.
So I can understand that ifyou're a business owner, that

(22:08):
that's not your personality,that's not the thing that's
front of mind for you.
You're just focused on you know.
Is everything operatingsmoothly?
How can I improve?
You know what we're doing here.
Let's make sure we open that upto the whole team.
There's no reason that anyemployee on staff that does have
maybe that photographicbackground or loves you know
photography or it's justpassionate about it, they should

(22:28):
be taking the photographs.
It doesn't matter who it'scoming from, where it's coming
from, because to my one of mycore themes here today, they
don't need to be polished.
But you're absolutely right.
Getting you know assetsgenerated is the starting point.
We need assets and you need adiversity of assets and, like I
said, it can be a challenge.
I understand that.
Like to your point there.
If you're an owner, ideallythat's where it's coming from An

(22:49):
owner who's invested in, youknow, generating a buzz through
the authenticity of their localmarket, getting photographs of
their brick and mortar store,people in it, how the you know
the look and feel is of a space,because, you're right, a
consumer on the Internet needsthat photographic proof, you
know, you can say it, you cantell them what the experience is
like.
But I'm the same way.
I'm always looking forphotographs of the place I'm

(23:11):
going to go to, where you know.
What is it, what's thealignment, what is maybe the
plaza look like, where thelocation is.
I'm always looking for thosethings.
So it's a great point.
Like I said, it's a thing wesee a lot.
So our recommendation is alwaysjust find people on staff that
are good at it, that arereliable, that will consistently
churn out those new assets foryou.

Yeah, I agree.
Well, Corey, any last thingthat you want to share with
people that you think would behelpful, useful or actionable
when it comes to local marketing, or just anything in general.

Yeah , I mean we spend a lot of time,
I think, touching on kind ofthe locality of our services.
One thing I want to make sure Imentioned.
I know your audience here alsois pretty big into the franchise
development community and space.
So we also do offer and have alot of success stories in the
franchise development realm aswell.
A lot of the themes of todaycarry over there.
You just mentioned it.

(24:07):
If you're a prospectivefranchisee, you want to see the
place you're going to buy.
What do these stores look like?
What does this business looklike, maybe even have
experienced it yourself?
So we're pretty well versed inmaking sure that we can deliver
the franchise developmentmessage to the right audience in
the right target segment.
Again, we have a lot of dataand kind of a track record and

(24:28):
success across the franchisedevelopment realm as well.
But the last thing I'd say justwe it's a bit salesy, but we
have a pilot program as abusiness and if you check, go to
our website and check that outAny campaigns or local markets,
reach out if you have anyquestions about how you're
eligible for that.
It's completely free for 90days.

(24:49):
It's a great way to just trialout what it is that we do, and
we're also really open toconsultation.
So I know today's chat was, youknow, hopefully helpful, in
that there are someopportunities for education and
kind of how you can leveragesocial marketing.
If you ever have any questionsabout, hey, here's what I'm
doing and I'm not seeing success, any recommendations, we're not
going to say no only if youwork with us.

(25:09):
Our team will be happy to helpout.
We have resources on ourwebsite, on our blogs, we do
webinars, so feel free to justcome on over, take a look at
what we've got.
If you have any questions, likeI said, just reach out.
Hopefully we can get you someanswers and point you in the
right direction.

Thank you, corey.
I really appreciate you.
You can go here and check itout https://Franpro.
vip/GoSocialMadeSimple, Corey,I'm sure we'll talk again soon.

Corey Cotnoir (SocialMa (25:33):
Awesome .
Thank you so much for having me.

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