Marketing Mambo

Smart Social Media Marketing Strategies with Ugly Mug Marketer Hannah Acosta

June 20, 2022 Terry McDougall Season 2 Episode 25
Marketing Mambo
Smart Social Media Marketing Strategies with Ugly Mug Marketer Hannah Acosta
Show Notes Transcript

Hannah Acosta is an experienced Social Media Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry, as well as the nonprofit world. She's honed her skills in Social Media, specifically Facebook advertising, strategy building, and content creation across Instagram and Facebook platforms at Ugly Mug Marketing in Alexandria, La.

She received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (B.S.B.A) from Aquinas College where she focused in Business Administration and Communication with a Marketing concentration and Spanish minor.

To contact Hannah:
www.uglymugmarketing.com
linkedin.com/in/hannahacosta

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If you'd like to talk to Terry McDougall about coaching or being a guest on Marketing Mambo, here's how you can reach her:

Website: https://www.terrybmcdougall.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terrybmcdougall
Email: Terry@Terrybmcdougall.com

Her book Winning the Game of Work: Career Happiness and Success on Your Own Terms is available at Amazon

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Here's how you can reach host Terry McDougall:

www.terrybmcdougall.com

www.linkedin.com/in/terrybmcdougall

Terry@Terrybmcdougall.com

Her book Winning the Game of Work is available at Amazon

Hey everybody. I have a delightful guest for you today. Her name is Hannah Acosta and she's a social media marketing manager At ugly mug marketing. In Alexandria, Louisiana. If you've been listening to marketing Mambo for awhile, you may remember that I interviewed Wayne Mullins. who's the founder of ugly mug last year. 

Hannah has lots of really cool tips on How to create more engagement. On social media and also how to run a really effective. Lead generation campaign on social media. Now, Hannah is originally from Holland, Michigan, Which is a cute little town  across lake Michigan, from where I am in Illinois. 

If you're ever in Michigan, check it out. 

But anyway, I think you're going to really enjoy the tips and also Hannah's infectious energy. So now without further ado, let the Mambo begin.  
 

Hey everybody. It's Terry McDougall with another episode of marketing Mambo and our guest today is Hannah Acosta. She is the manager of social media marketing at ugly mug marketing. And I actually had the founder of ugly bygone last year, Wayne Mullins, and they're just selling. Really interesting agency that I decided to have Hannah onto did a little bit of a deep dive into social media marketing.

And she's got some great things that she wants to share around how to make social media marketing, more engaging, and also how to use it for effective lead generation. So Hannah, welcome to marketing Mambo. How are you today?

I am great. Thank you so much for having me and I love that Wayne was on the show before. So another ugly mug marketing take.

Yeah.

Yeah, And I still really love the name of the agency.  It's really fun. And I also love what's behind that because it really is about effectiveness. So I just like scratch the surface of your background, but, would you like to do a deeper dive into who's Hannah?

Yeah, of course. I love that. So my journey started, in the marketing world, honestly, like in the midst of my time in college. So I went to a finest college in grand rapids, Michigan, go saints and a little shout out to them. And during my time there, I. Initially, I'd gone to school and I thought I wanted to be a teacher.

I feel like a lot of people start on some sort of track when they're in college. And they're like, I think I really want to do this. And then you get into it. And you're like, maybe not, maybe that's not what I want to do. So in the midst of me deciding you kind of fumbling through, is it marketing, is it business in general?

Is it finance and accounting? You know, what, what is it that I want to do? I had a really unique opportunity to be a part of. the creative marketing, summit, with the van Andel Institute and the van Andel Institute is a cancer and Parkinson's and neurodegenerative disease research facility located in grand rapids.

And they were in the midst of rebranding. They said, Hey, we are this big cancer facility, this big research facility. We got all of these wonderful researchers from across the world, working in our facility. And instead of, such and such high school down the road or Aquinas college,  and all of these community events happening and running events specifically for Susan G Komen or American cancer society, there is groundbreaking research happening right here in west Michigan.

And we want people to come in and be a part of it. We need to. Create a brand that feels accessible to the community that they can, do instead of a pink out game, they're doing a purple game. So they essentially designed this idea of, Purple community ended up being the name of this part of an Andel Institute.

And I got to be a part of naming that,  in, putting together an entire marketing presentation and a pitch to at the time the vice president of development, their entire marketing team. And they paired us up with other top marketing students from across the west Michigan area. And in the midst of that project and being able to use the creative side and kind of natural knack for public speaking that I had at the time.

Gosh. I was like, wow, this is the right fit for me. This is my calling. This is what I'm supposed to be doing something in marketing, something in public relations. And that's really where it all started. Fast forward. I ended up getting an internship and actually working for the van Andel Institute after that, within their development marketing communications department.

And it was an absolute blast. I loved my time there. But I knew that my time in nonprofit was going to be. Limited. I knew I didn't want to spend my entire career in the nonprofit world. And I knew that I needed to make a little bit of a shift early on in my career in order for someone to really look at my resume and understand how that translates into the business world.

 I had really good people skills I could connect with almost anyone I had done a lot of donor relations interactions helps people market their pink out football games  so transitioning into. Strictly marketing. I needed someone to take a little bit of a chance on me, and I really felt like Wayne saw a lot of potential within me,  four and a half, almost five years ago now.

And here we are today. So now, seven years into my career, I'm fully  in the marketing world. And it's been a really fun, wild, challenging ride, but I've loved every second of it.

you know, what's so interesting. I love your story. Thank you for sharing that. 

There's so many jobs that are out here in the world that most of us never really get view into.

I mean, we see teachers, we see doctors, firemen, you know, like the grocery store clerk, the post man, but there's so many jobs within organizations that you just never have the opportunity to see unless, you know, somebody or you do some research. And so that's so cool that you got to have that opportunity.

And, as.  marketer for 30 years before I became an executive coach, I loved it. There's just so much variety. And,  it's a job that you can pour your creativity and your analytical side into, and really make a measurable difference  in businesses or in your case, working for the nonprofit,   you can have an impact and it's so cool.

So I know that there's, another thing about you  you're married to someone in the military and you've done a lot of traveling, right? 

Yes. Yes. So my husband, went to Michigan state. He was in the ROTC program and after ROTC, it's not guaranteed that you're going to get picked up for active duty. You might go into the reserves. There's a lot of different avenues that you can go, but he got selected for active duty. And so he went on to.

Live in Virginia. So I did a lot of back and forth travel to Virginia, and he was stationed at Fort Lee for a little bit. And then he got stationed at Fort Polk, Louisiana, and then right when he got there, they were like, actually, you're going with three 83rd year going over to Virginia Italy, for deployment.

So he went there for. I think eight and a half or nine months. So that was fun because I actually got the opportunity to go and visit him, which typically does not happen during a deployment.  And whenever I tell people that he was deployed there, like Iraq, Afghanistan, or, something like that.

And I'm like no logistics officer in betweens, Italy supporting Africa and traveling back and forth to Africa. So that was his journey and it was really fun to kind of be alongside him. During that time,  in the ways that I could. And now he has since gotten out of the active duty life and is now in the reserves  at Fort Bragg and working full time actually for NetSuite, which is, a sub-company of Oracle.

So, he is in tech sales, and we live in Raleigh, North Carolina now.

Oh, okay, great. Great. Yeah. It's funny that you're talking about his deployment in Italy because when I was in college, a couple of my girlfriends and my sorority were in ROTC and when we graduated, one of them got selected to do recruiting in Hawaii. And I was like, oh man, that's a really tough gig.

Yeah. What a rough life. I know, even when he was deployed, of course it's hard because there's a time difference in you're sad and you miss them. And I was like, this, dude's eating so much pizza and drinking, like all the champagne. Living his best life in Northern Italy, he's hiking. He got to travel.

I mean, it was a really awesome experience for him and maybe something that he wouldn't have gotten to experience. And it was really cool for me to going to visit because I got to go to Europe for the very first time I had never been. So  both of his parents, were prior service to his dad served 20 years retired, went to west point  his parents actually met in Germany.

So it was fun for us. We all got to go over. And does it, my husband and do some traveling and yeah, it was just a really fun experience and fun for me too.

Yeah. Yeah.

definitely. I'll just drop this really quickly. My husband was actually in the Navy. I'm presuming your husband is an army. Is that right? 

That he 

Yes, army. Yeah. 

Yeah.

Yeah.

But, my husband actually enlisted when he was 18 and then went back to college when he got out on the GI bill, but he was on an aircraft carrier and they went all through the med and you know, what an exciting experience for, somebody who's like 19 or 20 years old to be going to like nice.

And, Naples and 

Egypt and Turkey. 

It's just really cool to have that experience. It sounds like we're here to promote getting into the military great opportunity, for many people, but, let's pin it and talk about marketing. 

So I know that you were talking to me about.

How you guys really help your clients to develop strategies where they can engage with users a lot more effectively on social media. So tell me more about that. How do you guys do that at ugly? 

Yeah.

There are a couple of different ways that we  strategized with our clients to get more engaged on social media. The first thing that we love to point out is that social media is so unique because it's an opportunity to have a really personal conversation with your customers, right?

It's not a billboard where someone's driving down the road and thinking, oh, what a lovely billboard and having this internal dialogue. That's not an opportunity for you to talk to somebody, right? They're just driving by your billboard. They're seeing your brand. They're having that  brand recognition, but you don't get to talk to them and you don't get to build the relationship.

And so social media is a really unique opportunity to be able to, talk to them, get in DMS, go and comment on their pictures on their Instagram account or on their Facebook account. And to have that dialogue. And people forget that people go on social media and they treat it as if it's a billboard, right?

Hey, buy my stuff. Hey, we got this special, Hey, next exit. Come and visit me. But what we need to focus on is the person that we're actually trying to talk. We need to focus on them. We need to stop posting all, sell my stuff, sell myself, sell my stuff, post or buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff.

We need to relate to these people. Our product or service is something that could potentially solve a problem that they have. But if we don't know who that person is and who we're speaking to and what daily challenges or struggles that they're having outside of,  it relating to our business or our service or whatever it is that we're offering.

Gosh, it's going to be awful hard to connect with them and to get them to stop scrolling and pay attention to whatever it is that we're talking about. So the first thing that we talk to our clients about, or anyone who's watching a free webinar. Whatever it may be is you need to first establish who your target audience is because every single post and piece of content that you create is crafted for that person.

But here's the challenge. A lot of people are like, well, my product or services for anyone it's for men and women, it's for people 18 to 60. And I'm like, no, it isn't. It's just simply not the way that you might talk to a 21 year old about skincare regimen, that your brand has your, this product that you offer is very different than how you're going to talk to somebody who might be 60, 65, 70 years old about skincare products and wellness.

the. Does the same thing. And it can be for people who are in the very early stages of skincare routines, which I will just say people who are like 20 years old and,  in middle school and stuff, I feel like their skincare routine versus mine, which was like, knock even the pads and like toothpaste on your zits and stuff.

It's totally, it's totally different now. Okay. So we're talking to a very specific audience of people. Who have very different needs or fears or anxieties about what their skin is going to look like later on, as opposed to, somebody who's 60, 65, maybe didn't wear some sunscreen for the early years of their life,  

who are you talking to? Who is your product or service really? For what struggles or challenges do they have? Are they a parent? Are they a mom? Are they a dad? Are they a stay at home, dad? Do they live in a rural community or do they live in a city? These are all things that we need to know and be able to speak to specifically when it comes to our target audience, we have to be done with the Willy nilly.

My product or service is for anyone and everyone. No, there has to be a specific person that at least this post or this piece of content is created around and created for. So that's the first thing. 

So basically  as you were talking, I was just imagining creating an avatar or an ideal client profile, and it sounds like it's really critical to do the research so that you understand. What's 

important to them, how they interact with the product   do they care about price or is it, quality or perceived quality or what their, friends use, whatever.

Like what are the things that they care about? 

yeah, absolutely. And what are the things that are going on in their lives? Like I said, is this a mom? Does she live in. The city. And is she sitting in the carpool line and you can create content around sitting in the carpool line and thinking about skincare, you run a specific targeted ad during the time that moms are in the carpool line at school, which I know living around the corner from the middle school. It's typically like 2 30, 3. O'clock like everybody's lining up probably even before then.  And so I think. Super important, not only again, as it relates to your product and what they care about.

Quality perceived value, all of that, but what's happening in their lives. Personally. And what, what struggles are they having in that they're busy. They don't have time to take care of their skin. If we're running with this skincare routine, they need something quick. have got babies and kids running this way.

And that way  maybe your customer avatar, you're like this person has three kids. Being really specific about what those challenges are that they're facing in their day-to-day lives, or maybe not challenges, but what is their day to day look like? And how is your product or service going to make their day better?

How is it going to easily fit into their routine? With that example 

Okay. And so then, it seems like the next logical thing is once you understand who they are and what's important to them, then you can develop very relevant. Content and messaging that they're going to recognize, that they're going to be like, oh, you're talking to me. 

Okay. Not only that, but you're talking to me at the time that I'm sitting here in the long carpool line and I've got time to scroll through my Facebook.

Cause otherwise I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off because I'm chasing all these kids. 

Or trying to make dinner or get a little exercise in or work 

at the dining room table virtually. Right. So. 

Yeah. 

Yeah, super interesting. 

So then the next thing that we have to consider too is all right. If I five identified, who am I really specific target audiences, I need to be thinking about, okay, what platforms are they spending their time on? And what times of the day is this person typically spending time on the platform?

There are a million. Studies and stats and facts out there about this time is the best time to post on Facebook. And that might be true for the overarching population that they've pulled and studied. But when you're thinking about busy moms, if we're going to keep running with that example of times that they might have downtime or.

Before the kids get up in the morning, if they're drinking their coffee and getting things ready for the day and scrolling through Instagram or Facebook, or when they're in that carpool line or after the kids have gone to bed and they're sitting down and watching Netflix and scrolling on their phone and hanging out, with their significant other or their husband and stops, whatever.

Those might be the times that, speak to that audience in particular. And when we're thinking about that audience too, it's like, well, is this person. Like Snapchat. Are they on YouTube? Are they on LinkedIn? Like platform are they spending their time on? And for that demographic in particular,  let's just say a mom who's between the ages of  27 and let's say 47 years old,  that's a little bit of a broad range, but those people are typically going to be on Instagram or they're going to be on Facebook.

They might be spending time on tech talk, but I would say. When you look at the numbers for tech talk like, and you look at majority, it's like, Hmm, are my people really spending their time there? The majority of their timers, the majority of the demographic that's spending time on Tik TOK. Is that really representative of who I'm trying to reach.

So you have to do a little bit of data digging. And there's a website. I think it's Statista  and they have remarkable  facts, facts, and figures about all of these different platforms. Who's spending their time on their, when they're spending their time. Is it more male versus female?

Is it more people of this age or that age? What is the average length of time that these people are spending on the platform too? I mean, there's incredible amounts of information available to us for free, but we have to be willing to go and kind of search and do the digging and say, okay, you know what?

I don't need to have Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat. I don't need to be on all the platforms.  I just need to focus my time and my energy, because it might be limited. I'm an entrepreneur and I'm wearing a lot of different hats. I don't have time to be producing content for every single one of these platforms, but you know what?

Maybe I can just focus on Facebook and Instagram right now because that's where my energy should be going, because that's where my people are hanging out. And I love to say that I'm like, you need to be hanging out where your people are hanging. Your people are not tick talk. Don't be worried about Tik TOK and 

how Jane DOE business down the streets on tick that that's okay.

She's targeting a different audience. Don't worry about what other people are doing. Look at the stats and facts and do your research and make an educated decision on how you want to spend your time and your financial resources.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's really good advice because I do think when it comes to social media and there, there are so many platforms that just keep popping up, like tick-tock and I mean, that's become so huge in such a short period of time. A lot of times people do feel this pressure to be on the newest hottest platform. And to your point, you really have to, do the analysis to say, well, are my people there? And if they are, is there overlap and is this aligned with the kind of content that we're going to provide or that we want to develop. 

So, Yeah, 

very interesting. What else?

Anything 

else around this? 

yeah. Lots of, lots of things, but I will say, my first point is figuring out who you're talking to. Second point is too. Think about and study where those people are spending their time. So you can go spend your time there. But the third point would be set a realistic goal. So if I'm an entrepreneur, if I'm someone who's wearing a lot of hats, Do I have time to post five times a day on one platform?

The answer is probably no. So we need to be more realistic about how we're going to use the time that we have and effectively push messaging out and use these platforms to help us make money. Right. Because that's why we are all here. We want to be able to use marketing strategies and to use these platforms in order to help us generate revenue for our business so that we can stay in business.

And so, We have to set a realistic goal. My goal for this month is to post three times for a week, here are three different categories that I'm going to focus on for each of those days. And then I'm just going to repeat that template over the course of the next four weeks. So one of my, , categories is going to be featuring or highlighting selling my product.

So I just need four posts to get me through this month that really highlight. The benefits of why someone should want to purchase my product, giving pricing, details, information, really speaking to that, stay at home. Mom who needs, really good skincare.  If we're going to keep running with that example or.

On Wednesday, maybe I'm going to do something that's really engaging. Where I want to get their feedback. Do you typically use moisturizer in the morning or afternoon? Tell us in the comments below you would be amazed at how many people interact with that and go on different grants.

Why they prefer to use moisturizer in the morning or prefer to just use moisturizer in the evening? And how can you develop content around that? And then maybe on Friday you say, okay, for this month, we're going to do reviews. So we're going to highlight our current customers. We're going to spotlight them.

We're going to use their photo. If we can, we're gonna use a quote from that. Use video testimonial. If they've talked about us on their Instagram stories, we can DM them, ask them to send us that video so that we can utilize that it doesn't have to be all created from scratch. And we don't have to completely invent the wheel.

And I think with these specific buckets that I've outlined here asking their opinion, asking them to engage with us, grabbing. Speaking to them about how our product can be a solution to the problem that they have. And then on Friday, spotlighting those reviews or those customer testimonials or making those people feel special, like we're featuring you on our page.

We love that, , this daily cleanser toner has been working well for you. Your, the results are amazing, celebrating that, celebrating them. One book that talks about this really well is Jeff Henderson's book. Know what you're for? The book talks about being for your customers. He also touches on for businesses being for your employees and being for your community.

But I really love the example that he uses in that book. He talks about Chubbies, which is a swimsuit and short shorts,  brand, my husband, and I love them. We think they're so fun. We love to be on the beach. And so fun. Swimwear is the name of the game. And when you go to the Chubbies platform, To any other social media pages.

You'll notice that there are very few highly curated styled photo shoots happening. The majority of what you're going to find on their platform are pieces of content that make. Customers laugh. They're gifts. They're memes about wearing short shorts. It's not even about Chubbies in particular, but it's just something to engage with them, make them laugh, get them to share it on their story, get them to comment or tag their friends.

 It's something that's intentionally designed to be engaging. The photos that they use to spotlight their actual apparel, their shirts, their swim trunks, their swimsuits are typically photos of their customers actually wearing the product. And then they take that image and post it on their social media and use that as their ad.

And how amazing is that? Because people don't buy from us as business owners, or as marketers, people buy from other people. So when people go to the chubby. Instagram page and they see, oh my gosh, look at this fun, super fit, bad wearing snatching, swim trumps with his son. And they're at the beach playing in the sand.

Gosh, that resonates to thousands upon thousands of other super fit CrossFit dads. They're trying to reach who are in their early thirties and that have kids, that's something that connects and resonates with those people. And I guarantee you, if they. The study, how much revenue was generated by a highly curated styled photo shoot versus that picture of the dad in his Chubbies with his son wearing the matching slim and struck Chubbies.

I'm going to tell you my bet, nine times out of 10 is that that image of the dad with their son is probably beating out the style shoot of the same pair of swim trunks, nighttime out of 10. Like I'm just willing to bet that.

I would totally agree with that, and I'll just, use my own business as an example that the business that closes fastest with me is referral business. Because I think anytime that you're buying something, there's always some inherent risk and. You don't have any line of sight into whether oh is this person or this brand,  trustworthy, you know, is it good quality?

It looks like it. But of course, their ad agency is going to make those ads look fantastic. Right. It how's it going to fit me? I'm just like an average dad. But if your friend says, oh my gosh, you need to buy this. This is so great. Or, you know, in my case, like Terry was my coach. You should hire her.

You know, people will be like, okay, my friend said, this is good, or this person has used this brand. And they say, it's good. You know, I think that there's just something about,  feeling like you can trust. Because they don't feel sold to.  It sounds like what you're recommending  is building a relationship with them through social media.

That's not Primarily based on selling, of course they need to sell, , but it's not, like you said, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. It's like, Hey, this is what we're about. Hey,  tell us about your habits. And when you were talking about that One example of like, Hey, do you moisturize in the, morning or at night?

Not only is that, Enabling engagement, but it's also like a form of research,  it's real time research. , and it's just like any other relationship that, you can adapt like really, even on the fly, based on having your finger on the pulse of like, what is going on right now with our customers.

You know,

Yeah, 

exactly. One of the fun, post that we did with one of our clients, they're a coffee shop and bakery is we did one. Do you like, iced coffee or hot coffee? And people are coming out of the woodwork commentator on this post. And to us it felt silly, but people are like, Ooh, ice copy all the way.

Like they're bought in to this client. They trust this client. They know them, they like them. They call them friend. And that's another really great point. I was thinking about this as you were talking. Yes, we are talking about building a relationship. And we're talking about taking someone from stranger.

Like they don't know your brand at all. They don't know you. They've just seen your ad maybe a couple of times, and we're trying to build that relationship so that we can take them from stranger to friends. Where they're interacting with us. They're laughing, they're tagging their friends in the comments.

Right. And then trying to get them to go from the friend zone 

over to customer. Right. Where they're like, okay, I'm in come on it, dip your toes in the water. The water's fine. Come over here. Yes.  I'm jumping in  I'm investing in this and purchasing the product. And then ultimately the piece about, 

being able to post  your customer's photos that turns someone into an evangelist, someone who's going to rant and rape. I love the quality of the chubby swimsuit. This is so amazing. Oh my gosh. Look, they shared my picture on,  their Instagram account. And one thing that's so strategic about Chubbies too, is they don't even like write a caption to go with it.

They just tag the person and put hashtag Chubbies next to every single post, but they do that. And then tag the product. Like they just let it speak for themselves. You know, then those people are going to go and they're going to share that on their Instagram story, or probably take a screenshot and share it in their group texts and with all their friends,  it makes them feel.

Like they're a part of something,  it makes them feel special.   If we think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we're filling this like need of like belonging, or maybe even this like need of status, like, Ooh. I paid $80 for my chubby swim trunks that I paid $35 for my kid.

Who's going to outgrow them into here for him. Dab, show me some drugs too. And  look at me,  it's fulfilling that need for someone.  And there's a lot. Conversation around  is that right or wrong? Are marketers just trying to trick people into thinking that they need, or is Facebook trying to trick us into thinking that we need these different products or services?

 But at the end of the day, especially in the example of Chubbies or skincare, it's discretionary income,  people don't have to wash their face. People don't have to buy a fancy pair of some trunks, but people want to, because it is fulfilling  that that need to fit in.

Well, I think that what we're talking about here, and, we're both marketers and it's about taking something that is a commodity and. Creating a brand,  a brand that has equity in it. And that is more than just a pair of shorts. I mean, because 

you could go to Goodwill and get,  any old pair of shorts that has,  a tie and put it on and okay.

You're covering. Right, but people want more than that generally. Clothing or anything that you put on your body usually has a lot more meaning it symbolizes something way more than making sure that you don't get wrinkles or that, your face doesn't feel dry. Cause you could probably use, Corn oil or something, you could use something way cheaper but there's a lot that symbolize there,  it's like, oh, well I want to preserve my looks or I want to care for myself or, whatever it is.

But, I think that  that's part of the reason why you want to understand your customers or your prospects is like what matters to them, because it's not just that, okay. It's this. Liquidy stuff that you put on your face to make it feel less dry. I mean, cause there's a lot of things that you could use. You know it, but, are you going to pay a premium for it? And what are you buying that goes along with that? I think that, with Chubbies the way that you were describing it, I'm a little bit familiar with it. I'm definitely not. I'm out of the demographic, I think, You know, it's a bit of a lifestyle brand, right?

I'm actually thinking of like Lily Pulitzer or something that,  there's prints like that when you see somebody in.

those dresses and it's like the mom and the, and the daughters all in the matching dresses, like it symbolizes something, right. You know, it's the carefree, elegant life at the beach, but, , affluent, whatever it symbolizes something, it says something, and.

 We buy that. It's not just the colorful fabric or the ailine dress, you're buying something that's beyond that. And that's what brand is in my mind. It's like it's beyond the commodity. 

Yeah, exactly. And that's what I think is so hard for people when they're starting their business or trying to figure out how to market or figure out what's unique about their product or their moisturizer, or I was watching a webinar the other day of Jasmine stars and she's a. Social media, curator guru, and on her webinars, she brought one of the guests online to talk about their product and share a little bit of their struggles of crafting specific content.

And the example was, she was  I own a popcorn business. We sell popcorn. A lot of people sell popcorn. People can go to the store and get skinny pop and Boomchickapop, and you know, all of these different things. Why is someone gonna want to buy my popcorn? Right. And so that they go back to, well, who are you trying to target?

Who's your ideal target customer? Who is that customer avatar, that perfect person who's going to. Fire popcorn, love it, and then tell their friends about it. Right. And so they kind of walk through all right, well, we have to really relate to this person so that they feel like your popcorn is for them only, 

like Boomchickapop might be for a lot of people, but whatever, this gal's popcorn company this popcorn is for me, she is speaking to me. She is also the owner of this company is also a mom. She's also sitting in the carpool line. She also is sometimes. busy making dinner for her whole family.

She forgets to eat herself. And then she's like late night having a popcorn snack while she's watching, selling sunset on Netflix and then, going to bed so she can wake up and do it all over again. The next day,  we have to really know that person because then they start to associate our popcorn, this example with all of those feelings and emotions and the fact that we can relate to them.

And it's not that your popcorn is better than Boomchickapop or skinny pop or that it's different  than those other ones. It could be the exact same thing in concept, but you have this unique angle perspective and that, you know exactly who you're talking to. You're not talking to a wide range,  18 to 65.

You're talking to that very specific unique person. 

What does it stand for? Yeah, 

it's super interesting.  I'm here in the Chicago land area and. Garrets popcorn  is iconic in this area. They have a stand at the airport and anytime that you're there, there's like always a huge line,  because  it symbolizes Chicago, right? When people come, they're like, oh, I'm going to get this to take it home. Now. Is it any different than the popcorn that I grew up with on the boardwalk in Rehoboth beach, Delaware, a little bit. But when people get Rehobeth, they get the Dolly's popcorn. And when they come to Chicago, they get the Garrett's popcorn, but you know,  it's symbolizes something, 

 That specific. 

So it is,  interesting. Cause you said, at the very basic level. Popcorn so cheap. Right? You can go get like a bag of it. But it's just like, what are they going to do to differentiate theirs or to position it out there as something that's unique. That's appealing to who they're marketing to.

It's like, this is why I love marketing. So 

fun. 

You mentioned to me before we hit record that, you have some success stories to talk about when it comes to lead generation as well. 

Yeah.

So I'm going to share some examples of some of the great work that you guys have done for some of your clients. 

Yeah, absolutely. Gosh, this was probably December of 2019. One of our clients came to us and they said, Hey. We have been trying to do Facebook lead generation on our own, and it's not working. We're not having any success, but we think that you guys might be really good at it.

And we're going to give you a month to prove to us that you can get us results using Facebook lead generation for our heating and cooling company. And I was terrified because. I was like, I don't know anything about get, first of all,  I know we have an HVAC system in my home and I know that it works.

And if something goes wrong, we call this guy and he shows up and he fixes it  and it's good. I'm not the HVAC expert. So  over the course of six weeks, we had to put together a strategy. Figure out who this target market was.

These HVAC locations were in Louisiana and a couple of them were also in Mississippi and figuring out, okay, well, what is the demographic in Meridian, Mississippi? What is the demographic? And who are we serving in Jackson, Mississippi? Who are we serving in McComb? Each of those.

Areas of Mississippi are very different. Jackson is definitely more of a city, more metropolitan area and Meridian might be a little more rural and McComb is definitely more of a rural community. And so we're like, okay, what needs to change with these ads across these different locations? And then we've also got Louisiana.

So what are what's going on here? So we had a quick do a study of all of these areas, looking at demographics, asking them for any data or information that they might be willing to share. So first analyzing, what challenge are we trying to overcome? And then what assets do you have already that we could potentially use?

So studying, is there a trend of zip codes of certain areas that your customers come from in Meridian, in Jackson, in MCO, in Baton Rouge,  in Alexandria, That typically. People in those zip codes, choose you over the next guys, HVAC company, because HVAC, I mean, you can call anybody. Most people just do a quick Google search.

Cause it's usually in the midst of an emergency, like my HVAC system has gone out. I need to find someone now. So it's like, how do we overcome that to where we want to be? The thing that people think of. And we want to get to people. And build a relationship with them so that when the emergency happens, they already know us and have a saved in their phone, have had a good experience, have left the five star review and they want to use us again.

So we were like, okay, you need help generating leads. You have this asset of this massive database. You guys have been in business for X amount of years. This is great. We can use this, we could take your customer list and we can actually upload that into Facebook too. And we can target our ads to previous customers, create lookalike audiences of those people.

Okay, great. So our overall strategy is lead generation campaigns on Facebook using this data that we have.  But what's the offer. Because if someone's HVAC system is already broken, the likelihood of them, seeing our ad clicking, get more information or learn more, sign up and filling out the form and then waiting 24 hours potentially, or a business day to hear back.

They've already done the Google search elsewhere. what is the offer that we're going to give them? That's low cost. I'm not trying to get somebody to buy, a $7,500 HVAC system, on their first interaction with us. So one thing that they consistently offered over the years, but it's just lived on their website is a $69.

And this is something that a homeowner can sign up for, can pay their $69 for, and someone will come to their home. They will clean out their whole system. They will clean the coils. They will add Freon or whatever the heck else they do. That's on their checklist. They will check all the wiring. They will give you an analysis and tell you, Hey, your systems, this old.

We're going to check back with you in X amount of years or months or whatever to see, are your systems still running? Because we noticed X, Y, and Z, and we predict that you'll need a new system by this time,  to give me a full analysis of like, what's going on with this, because that can be a really hefty, some people don't just have seventy-five hundred, 10 grand just laying around to buy a new HVAC 

system.

So it's. Kind of helping them prepare for whenever that time comes. And we found that this offer is the thing that gets them in the door and allows them to build that relationship. And it's strategically. Okay. It's hot in the south, right? Like a lot of their locations are in Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas.

It's hot. Okay. Y'all it's summer in the south. So we have to strategically run these campaigns and promote this at times as people are preparing for those summer months and that summer heat. And then also, again, as people are preparing. Cooler weather, not as cold as Chicago, , west, Michigan, where 

I'm from, Cold weather, cooler weather for those southerners.

 And so it's really cool to see how this offer has evolved over the years so that first month of working with them when phenomenally we did enough to prove our worth and get a return on investment for this. But over the course of the next 6, 7, 8 months after that, across those eight locations, we were able to generate over 800 leads of people who are interested in a $69 tune-up or who were interested in some form of financing on a new system.

And it was absolutely remarkable because we were seeing leads coming in in real time. Through Facebook and using Zapier, which is an automation tool that I chef's kiss. Absolutely love use every single day would die without it, using Zapier. You're able to say, all right, exactly. Or every time a lead comes in on Facebook, we now want that lead to get dumped into a spreadsheet so that we can  track that internally.

But then we also want it to go into their CRM so that the customer service representatives can see those leads coming in and real time. Call them. And then we can track and see and follow up in there. All right. Which one of these customers that came in from Facebook actually converted into a customer.

And then did that person come back again over time? And then having the ability to kind of study. All right. Well, those customers that did convert, is there a trend of who reached out male versus female? Is there a trend of certain zip codes? Is there a trend. This person actually was a previous customer, but we haven't seen them in three years or is this person an entirely new customer?

And what is the potential lifetime value of this customer? Now that they've come, had a great experience and they're in the system, they're in the funnel now. And so. Now looking back on having those eight locations in just a month and then them staying with us for eight months to now, we manage 47 locations across the Gulf coast.

We've proved that this is possible. Most importantly, what I'm doing is using my knowledge, using the data, implementing the systems and processes that we've put in place in order to scale this across multiple locations. And I've seen it work very, very well. It kind of leaves, incredible amounts of success.

And people are like, oh, but that sounds expensive. That's not for me.  I'm just a mom and pop HVAC shop and I'm like, no, this is possible for you too. If you have the time to invest to do it on your own, nothing that I'm doing is rockets. But it does take the time, which is an incredible resource when you're a business owner and an entrepreneur.

 It does take an immense amount of time because it's not just setting and forgetting the ads. It's setting, monitoring, pivoting when necessary split testing, studying which graphic works, which headline works, which is amazing that Facebook ads manager, which is the platform that we're using to run these ads.

It's amazing. All of the data that you can see and take in as a result of running ads on these platforms. Of course you have to pay to play. But it can be a really great source of leads for your business, whether you're in the HVAC industry or you're in another industry, we've seen this work so well, we had another client, that they did custom hardwood floors,  and.

Saw the wood did everything there located at Louisiana. , and we were generating,  I think like 80 leads a month for them on a budget, smaller than what you would assume in order to get 80 leads. And it's just all about, okay, what's the offer? What's the funnel look like for the customer on their end.

And that was a challenge that honestly we had to refine to with our HVAC company that we work with. That's something that's a little bit out of my control as a marketer. My job is to get the lead, but on their end, I need you guys to be following 

up with the leads in 

it. 

They need to follow up. 

Yes. Like it needs to be in a timely manner.

Otherwise we're going to lose them 

because people forget.  

Well, the other thing I think is really interesting is that sometimes if your lead gen campaign is very successful, if it's too successful and you're,  flooding the funnel so that they can't follow up, you really got to gauge it right. And make sure that you're not giving them.

Too many leads that they can't follow up on it. So 

that's yeah, super interesting.  Just thinking about the whole, sales funnel and, when you pass them off, do they have enough people  or are they all booked? are there so many people out there doing those service calls or those tune-up calls that,  they can't really respond to more leads so interesting. 

Yes. And it's so funny you say that because one of the locations, just yesterday, they were like, Hey, can we turn this off? Our technicians are booked out two and a half weeks and no one wants to wait that long for a tune-up. And I'm like, Ooh, got it. Thank you so 

much for letting me know, shutting those ads off.

Let's switch over to some other offer. Maybe that is a little bit slower.  Like 0% interest for 72 months. That's someone who's considering a new system. It's not as many leads. It's maybe someone who's a little bit more serious. Okay. Maybe we need to scale back and shift up the offer and strategize how we want to tackle 

the month of may, 

as we're looking at that, 

Yeah. That's such a great success story.  It's cool to hear, but,  I'm going to need to start wrapping it up. So a question that,

I always ask my guests before we say goodbye is what last words of wisdom do you have for the listeners of marketing? Mambo could be about leads, could be about anything. 

Ooh.

I think that I feel like anything about that for a second. Last words of wisdom.

My words of wisdom to someone listening, whether you're in the marketing industry or you're an entrepreneur or small business owner would be to not compare your social media presence to the guy or the gal down the road, because. Social media is intentionally designed for us to spend more time on the platform.

AKA spend more time analyzing and looking at other people's lives or other businesses. And it's really easy to get sucked into. Well that coffee shop down the road is having such great success and they're posting X amount of times per day, and they're doing this, that and the other, and they have 10,000 followers and.

You can't get caught into the comparison game. When you're a business owner and entrepreneur, you really have to focus in and hone in on what are my goals. What am I after? Hey, I may only have 500 followers, but I'm doing like $10,000 in sales in a week. And that's amazing. Those people might have 10,000 followers, but they only need to be doing $5,000 in sales for the week.

I'm making these numbers up. So you have to remember that social media, there's a lot of vanity in it. Right. But really. Stay in your lane and only focus on your business, your goals, what you're after. Don't worry about how many times they're posting a day set a realistic goal for yourself and post how many times you can a day 

that 

those are my words of wisdom. 

that's great advice. That's really great advice. I love start with your goals and build a strategy that supports that, and don't play the comparison game. I love it. Well, Hannah, tell me where can people find you and more information about ugly mug marketing? 

Yes. So, you can find us at ugly mug marketing on Instagram, on Facebook. We are also on LinkedIn. You can get on there and connect with us there. You can also follow our YouTube channel and visit our website. Ugly mug marketing.com. If you want to connect with me personally, , feel free to email admin@uglymugmarketing.com and we could get connected that way.

They'll push that information over to me. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn as well. I love getting connected with new people, especially people who are early on in their careers, or just starting their businesses and need some help and guidance of where to start. Be more than happy to connect with people there as well.

Well, great. Thank you, Hannah. It's been so wonderful talking with you today. I really appreciate you sharing all your insights and wisdom about social media marketing with our listeners. 

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.