Are you focusing on tactics instead of strategy in your marketing? In this episode of The Growth Pod, Sara Nay shares how you can create a clearly defined marketing strategy that improves the ROI of your marketing efforts in a way that's clear and understandable.

Specifically, Sara shares:

• How to blend your business goals with your marketing strategy.
• The easiest way to make a marketing strategy work for your brand.
• Costly missteps that you can avoid with your marketing strategy.

Mentioned in This Episode:

• Book: Duct Tape Marketing
• Duct Tape Marketing Certification
• Connect with Sara on LinkedIn
• Sara's FREE Resources

About Sara:

Sara Nay is the chief operating officer at Duct Tape Marketing. With over thirteen years working in the small business space, her passion is to install marketing and operating systems for small business owners so they can get more clarity and freedom in their lives.

Let’s Connect!

• Be the First to Know When Episodes are Live
• Connect with Angela on LinkedIn

Work With Me: growthdirective.com

About Angela

Angela Frank is a fractional CMO with a decade-long track record of generating multimillion-dollar marketing revenue for clients. She is the founder of The Growth Directive, a marketing consultancy helping brands create sustainable marketing programs.

Her new book Your Marketing Ecosystem: How Brands Can Market Less and Sell More helps business owners, founders, and corporate leaders create straightforward and profitable marketing strategies.

Angela is the host of The Growth Pod podcast, where she shares actionable tips to help you build a profitable brand you love.

Affiliate Disclaimer: Some of the links mentioned above are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link or make a purchase using it, we may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support our podcast and allows us to continue bringing you great content. We only recommend products and services we truly believe in. Thanks for your support!

Welcome to the growth pod. Today on the podcast we have Sara Nay, who is the Chief Operating officer at Duct Tape marketing.

With over 13 years working in the small business space. Her passion is to install marketing and operating systems for small business owners so they can get more clarity and freedom in their lives.

Sara, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me, Angela. I'm excited to be here.

I am excited as well. You are going to share how you go about creating a clearly defined marketing strategy.

But before we get started, can you share a little bit more about your experience defining marketing strategies for companies across different small businesses?

Of course. So Duct Tape Marketing has been in business for 30 years now. And I've actually been with them coming up on 14 years now in December will be 14 years.

And over that whole entire timeframe, we've always been focusing on strategy before tactics when it comes to marketing.

John, our founder, has actually written a book called Duct Tape Marketing and we have an updated version that he's written more recently called the Ultimate Market Marketing Engine.

But essentially we've found in the small business space and just really business space in general, where a lot of people miss in terms of marketing is they just dive straight into the tactics.

So they dive straight into things like paid advertising or SEO or whatever it might be, but they haven't really taken a step back to understand who their target audience is or what message resonates with that target audience or what their customer journey might look like.

And so over the years, we've created a systematic approach to marketing that leads with strategy and then gets to implementation after initial like 30 to 45 day time period. And so we've worked with thousands of businesses at this point across all different industries.

But we've also created a certification program as well.

And so we certify other marketing coaches, consultants in our frac and agencies in our fractional CMO agency approach, which is still based on the foundation of strategy before tactics.

I love that I have found working with many small businesses the exact same thing where you've heard that you should be running paid ads. And so they start running paid ads and then there's no clear common thread behind it all.

So I love that you're saying that you need to back up and take a strategy perspective or a strategic approach to marketing. So with that in mind, what are the most important pieces for a marketing strategy in your opinion?

So we always start with an initial like audit of what does your marketing and brand look like today? Because you might need to be updating your branding in order to move forward with any implementation. So it's always kind of a baseline.

What's your website look like, your social, your story you're telling all of your target audience that we can find. So we start there, what's it look like today, the state of today.

And then from there we do a bunch of research on competitors and actually interviewing some of our clients clients to understand them on a deeper level. And we develop Personas or client profiles and then messaging that resonates with that group.

Because honestly, that is, in my mind, step one and two of marketing, you need to know who you're targeting, but on like a deeper emotional level, not just like a high surface level. And so you need to understand who you're targeting.

And then you need to craft messaging that helps pull them in and makes them feel like you're speaking directly to them. And so that's, you know, typically the first two things you want to nail with the marketing strategy.

And then after you've understood those things, we then typically map out the customer journey. And so our customer journey inductee marketing, is how can people get to know, like trust, try, buy, repeat, and refer from a business?

And so we're ultimately mapping out and brainstorming how are people going to get to know about the business all the way through those stages to refer? And then after we go through that exercise, we understand the customer journey and where gaps and opportunities are.

We identify growth priorities for the client, and then we put it all in a content strategy, and then we put it all into an execution calendar.

At the end of strategy, then we're basically planning out what are your growth priorities and reoccurring marketing things that you should focus on over the next quarter.

And then once we go into a retainer for clients, we then analyze like midway through that quarter, okay, what should we be focusing on for the next quarter as part of that as well, you have to identify what metrics you should be paying attention to, what success look like. Because marketing is, it's a bit of a planning but then testing game.

And so you have to create the plan, but then you need to pay attention to the metrics and the data to then be able to shift if things aren't working well on a specific platform. Like maybe your audience is not there and it doesn't make sense and maybe you should shift.

So for some of our clients, they do really well on Facebook advertising. Other clients do really well on Google. So it just kind of just depends on where their audience is and what resonates and what makes the most sense.

So marketing is always shifting and evolving when you get into the actual execution of things. But it's really important to create the this initial strategy for many reasons.

But a big one is you're not just playing the guessing game like you've put in the research, you've created the plan and then you're putting it into motion from there.

Yeah, I love what you're saying. You're not playing a guessing game. I think that having this clear defined strategy behind everything you're doing in marketing is so important.

And then like you said, creating that testing plan.

One of my favorite quotes about marketing is that things that you're certain are going to work, don't work, things that are working, stop working, and things that you were certain weren't going to work, do work. And so having that testing plan for your marketing strategy I think is really important. And so I love that you brought that up.

The other thing that I love is that you create kind of these quarterly chunks for the strategy. It's pretty easy to get overwhelmed looking at everything that needs to get done.

But you have the overarching strategy, but then you're able to put first things first. So with that in mind, how do we take this strategy then and the goals that we have for marketing and tie those to overall business objectives? Right.

Everybody's goal with marketing is to increase revenue, sales, whatnot. So how do we take what we're doing in marketing and marry it with those business objectives?

Yeah, that's a great question.

And that's really something that when we're working as like a fractional CMO for our clients, which is a lot of what we do, we're a fractional CMO agency.

But when we come in and we create the initial marketing strategy, before we get started with any of the work that I just talked through, we have a discovery session on the front end. And so we're asking a bunch of questions to our clients to basically get all the information that we need to then create a marketing strategy.

And so a lot of what we're diving deep into there are, what are some of your business objectives and goals? What is your revenue at currently? Where do you want it to be in one year and three years from now?

And so we're getting into like their strategic planning as a business as a whole. Whole. Because we need that information to then be able to create a marketing strategy that gets them closer to their overall business goals.

That's an area where I see a lot of people miss when they bring in like outside Marketers, consultants, coaches, fractional CMOs, whoever it is, is, they won't align them and talk about these things with them. So they'll just basically say like, this is what we want from a marketing perspective. And then they go do it.

But they're not on the same page as like, what are we actually trying to accomplish? Because a lot of the business goals directly relate to marketing.

A lot of cases, because as you said, it's revenue growth, it's more leads, you know, it's whatever it might be. So you need to have conversation with that very early on.

And then when we're making our recommendations throughout the strategy, we're saying, okay, your business objective is this.

That's why we're proposing this marketing strategy and these campaigns and these tactics to help get you closer and moving in the right direction for that specific business goal.

Yeah, I love that.

I think that it's really easy to get caught up in the nitty gritty of oh well, we generated, you know, 4, 400 leads this month and then kind of lose it in translation how it relates to those business objectives. So I love how your approach is to start with those from the very beginning and make sure that those are tied into the marketing strategy.

One of the things that I'm curious. Oh, go ahead.

I don't say. And then, and then like on a monthly basis beyond the marketing strategy, we have what we call the marketing PNL that we use for our clients.

And so we're reporting on things like number of leads, conversions and all that stuff, but they're actually reporting back to us on things like actual clients booked and revenue and stuff like that. So we're able to see the full cycle of marketing, not just, oh, we got you more leads like that doesn't. That alone doesn't really matter.

Like they, we need to see that the leads are qualified and that they went through the sales process and they turned into revenue and they're staying along with the client a long term. And that way we can prove our OI from a marketing perspective.

So it's a part of the initial like strategy, but then also it's part of the ongoing reporting and relationship as well.

Yeah, I love that.

I think that there are so many data points there to help inform if something is off track and then you can go ahead and sort of QA that and get, get things back in line with that mission and that strategy. So with that in mind, you know, not everything's always going to work with marketing.

What are some of the challenges that you most commonly see small businesses face when it comes to creating a successful marketing strategy.

Yeah, there's a few things I see a lot, we talked about this a lot. But like the metrics and reporting piece, I see a lot of small businesses just not understand like what they should be tracking or how to track it.

And so an example, like I had a client that was like sending out direct mail for years and years before they started working with us. And I was like, how's that going? Is it successful or not? And she's like, I don't know. We just send it out and a couple of people call, I think.

And it's like you put thousands of dollars into spending. Sending out direct mail on a limited marketing budget and you have no idea if it's effective or not. Like, why do you keep doing it?

And so we had the conversation around like putting QR codes and putting call tracking numbers on the direct mail piece and tracking to see if it's successful, to understand if we should consider, like, continue to invest in that moving forward. So if you're going to do any marketing tactics, make sure you have a plan in place to understand like what success look like.

Should you continue to do it or not? And if not, then should you shift to something else. And so I think that's a number, that's a big challenge.

Also in the small business space, I see a lot of people when they're like outsourcing marketing, a couple things they'll start like they'll have one company for their paid ads and they'll have one company for their SEO and they'll have one company for their email.

And none of it's talking together and none of it's saying the same thing because it's all these separate companies working on what they specialize in and it's not comprehensive and consistent.

And so I think having one company that can help or internally, like hiring people internally, multiple people internally, but having a team that's dedicated to all of your marketing versus like piecing it out to a bunch of different separate companies is often a more effective solution. But on another area I see a lot of people struggle.

And the last one is, you know, a lot of times in the small business space specifically because that's where we do a lot of our work, you'll see companies like hire junior level marketers and maybe they hire like one or two and they expect them to like create the marketing strategy and handle all of the execution as well. And really like marketing is complicated. You have to have strategic thinkers, you have to have People that are super into like data and metrics.

You have to people have people that can specialize in certain areas. And so it's expensive for a small business to be able to afford all of those different roles.

And so that's why I'm typically encouraging like the fractional approach because you can hire great people for, you know, a fraction of the cost because it's part time. But we've also had a lot of success with hiring like contractors or part time marketers as well.

And so if you're hiring someone that focuses or that specializes in like SEO and you're a small business, you don't need them full time in a lot of cases, but you can get someone that specializes in that for a lot less if you're going like the part time approach. So I know that was kind of like a lot to throw at you, but those are the main things that I see people struggling with.

No, I think that just really proves that marketing can be really complicated.

And so if you don't know what you're doing, you should find somebody who can partner with you, who can demystify things and work with you to partner on that growth. You mentioned a couple times the role of the fractional CMO and how that's a really an asset to small businesses.

So from your point of view, what role does the fractional CMO play in a small business and what is the benefit of hiring a fractional CMO versus a full time either CMO or somebody who is dedicated full time to the strategy in your business?

Yeah, so really starting with the role, the role of a fractional CMO is coming in creating the marketing strategy, defining the metrics that you're going to attract or that you're going to track moving forward, and then organizing and instructing a team on the execution. So like, that's the simplest way that I would describe it for us.

When we work with clients, we come in in the fractional CMO seat, we create the strategy, we create the reporting plan and then we move into execution. And when we're moving into execution, we're a fractional CMO agency.

So we're able to bring in some of our team members to plug any gaps on the existing marketing team for our client. And so let's say they have someone that's great, like social media and content, but they don't have any web developers or anyone that focuses on SEO.

We're able to come in and lead the whole entire team as the fractional CMO on the execution, but then direct Their team doing the content piece and the social piece, and also direct our team on the SEO piece and website piece to actually bring all of the marketing to life. And so that's the simplest way. Like I would describe the role of fractional CMO in our viewpoint, I know there's different definitions.

The benefit, I think, well, as I mentioned earlier, it's a lot less expensive than hiring someone full time. And also so you're able to get someone, you know, for part time to then provide a lot of the same value.

But maybe you don't need someone full time because you're in the small business space.

And so I think that's what one of the big benefits in fractional versus full time cmo, but in the fractional CMO agency space specifically, the big benefit is the fact that we're able to bring in our team for execution and build out a whole marketing department for our small businesses versus them having to go out and hire and train and onboard those people themselves.

Yeah, I love that.

And it goes back to what you were saying earlier about having either an internal team who knows your marketing or having all of your marketing in the hands of a fractional CMO and their team. So everyone's working together towards a common goal and they understand your products and services.

Yep, absolutely.

I love that. So, Sara, you have spent so much time helping small businesses. I really enjoyed our conversation today. You're clearly somebody who knows her stuff.

I want to know what's next for you.

What's next for me?

We've put a lot of focus on growing our certification intensive program, which is certifying the fractional CMOs, agencies, coaches, consultants over the last, like, year and a half. And I absolutely love the training component behind that, the education we're able to provide, the value we're able to provide.

We actually have a certification group going on this week, and so I'm really passionate about providing them the education and tools and skills they need and then watching their businesses grow.

And so, again, we've been putting a lot of emphasis on growing that program over the next year and a half, and that's going to continue to be a big focus of mine in the future as well.

I love that.

I think that's a really great way to draw on this experience that you guys have working with businesses and then enable other people to do the same thing.

If somebody's interested either in learning more about the certification program or getting in touch with you to get some fractional CMO or marketing support, where's the best place for them to do that.

Yeah, we have a great page on our website. It's DTM World Growth.

We have a bunch of free resources on that page specifically for small business owners or marketing coaches, consultants and agencies. So you can kind of choose your own adventure on that page. But a bunch of great free resources there. And LinkedIn is a great place as well.

So my name is just SARAH Nay on LinkedIn.

Amazing. And I will link that in the description as well as your LinkedIn. So if you're listening and any of that sounds good to you, it's right there for you.

Sara, thank you so much for joining us today. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Thank you. I enjoyed it as well. Thanks for having me.

Angela, if you enjoyed this episode of the Growth Pod, please leave us a review. Thank you so much for listening and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.