May 6, 2024

How to Turn Chaos Into a Successful Digital Marketing Strategy

How to Turn Chaos Into a Successful Digital Marketing Strategy

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Digital marketing transformation has never been easy for most organizations and perhaps it is more complicated than ever.   Today we have a story about how a marketer drove a high impact digital marketing  transformation and share ideas for how to overcome challenges getting organizations to embrace digital marketing. 

In this episode, Rebecca shares her extensive experience bringing effective digital marketing strategies to multiple organizations including for profit and nonprofit theater organizations, starting with her first role straight out of college. With no formal marketing training, she faced the challenge of introducing and implementing social media and digital marketing in an environment that lacked both strategy and online presence. Through mentorship, self-driven learning, and perseverance, Rebecca successfully transformed the marketing approach by focusing on three main areas: establishing a strong brand identity, creating and optimizing digital marketing channels, and elevating content quality. Her efforts led to improved audience engagement, open rates on emails, and increased donations, showcasing the importance of cohesive online strategies in growing and sustaining nonprofit theaters. Rebecca also provides advice for businesses looking to navigate the digital marketing landscape today, emphasizing the need to understand one's audience, be selective with social media platforms, and create authentic content.

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00:21 Rebecca's Journey in Marketing and Theater

01:06 Challenges and Strategies in Nonprofit Theater Marketing

05:43 The Three-Step Plan for Digital Marketing Success

11:39 Overcoming Digital Marketing Challenges

12:05 The Impact of Effective Marketing

16:41 Adapting to the Digital Marketing Landscape

22:55 Final Thoughts and Advice on Digital Marketing

Chapters

00:00 - Nonprofit Theater Marketing With Social Media

17:39 - Navigating Digital Marketing Challenges

27:04 - Content Creation and Digital Marketing Transformation

Transcript

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Welcome to today's episode.

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Our guest today is Rebecca Welcome.

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Thank you so much, Eric.

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I'm so excited to join you today and chat.

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Why don't we start by you sharing with us just a little bit about who you are and what you do?

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Absolutely so.

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I've been in marketing and operations for over a decade and I spent a large majority of my career in theater and nonprofit arts organizations, using social media as that tool to help enhance their audience engagement but also overall boost their visibility online as a great way to not just drive and generate revenue and profit for them, but really establish a stronger connection and loyalty with their audiences.

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I'm sure you're going to tell us all about how there is a lot of theater in marketing, so why don't we jump right in?

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Why don't you share a story with us about some of the marketing you've done?

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That you're the most proud of the best marketing you've done.

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I think the best story is actually the story of establishing marketing for nonprofit theaters, and it really started straight out in college.

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For me, the best marketing was to be able to bring the marketing to the theater where I was first working.

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I was looking to start my career as an actor, and so I joined this resident theater company, one of the oldest repertory theater companies in America and probably one of the last theater companies that would allow fellows to live in residence at the theater.

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And we all had to have a day job, eric.

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So we had to do something that would help drive revenue, help support the business, as well as get to be a part of the creative acting process or directing, whatever our focus was.

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And so they saw my talents, they saw my skill set was more inclined towards marketing and admin work.

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So I became that marketing fellow, and this was back in 2010.

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Fellow, and this was back in 2010.

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Facebook had launched pages, I want to say two or three years prior to, and paid advertising was a newer element to Facebook.

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So businesses were starting to use Facebook, starting to use social media a lot more focused and heavier in their digital marketing strategy.

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But for a theater in general, and especially for this theater.

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There was barely any social media.

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I would say we had a profile for our box office, not even a Facebook page, but a profile.

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We had to log in and pretend to be the box office.

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Our Twitter account was dormant.

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It had been established.

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It didn't look like us at all.

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Nobody had ever really tweeted and no one was really paying any attention to where audiences were consuming content and where people were spending their time, which was on social media.

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And we had a lot of traditional marketing efforts still tried and true, but that's all we were doing Direct mailers, flyers and our patrons relied on those or they relied, relied or we relied on hoping that patrons would come back just by hearing about the next show if they came to the current show, and you can imagine that's problematic, right?

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We're a nonprofit organization.

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We need to grow.

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We need to rely on our audiences, as well as our donors, to help keep us sustained and alive.

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And it was a struggle and we were struggling.

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We had very limited resources and there was nobody in the theater that really understood how to use social media for marketing purposes, or even that there should be a digital marketing plan or strategy.

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And because there wasn't that strategy, we were ultimately creating marketing in chaos, and I believe you can't create in chaos.

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I don't think you can create marketing in chaos and I believe you can't create in chaos.

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I don't think you can create art in chaos.

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I don't think you can create marketing in chaos and you certainly can't help drive a business to growth in chaos, whether you're nonprofit, for-profit.

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So we really needed to have a strategy, that overall vision, goal, direction for our marketing.

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And then we need to have the marketing plan in place in order to measure, set those milestones, track and overall enhance the performance of it.

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So that was one of the bigger hurdles and challenges.

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I did not have any formal marketing training, keep in mind.

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I studied classics and I studied art history, so I understood storytelling, I understood what composition and what great art looked like.

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But I didn't have the marketing fundamentals and fortunately, we had someone on our board who was an executive in marketing with one of the national television station offices in the city where we were, and he was able to help guide me and mentor me.

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But he was not a social media marketer, he was not skilled in that area, so his knowledge and understanding went so far, but I had his buy-in and I had his encouragement, and that helped me in the process of not only introducing social media as a relevant form of marketing but implementing it along the way too.

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And you can imagine I'm an eager tech-stabby millennial, and it took a lot of time to convince people.

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You can imagine change is inevitable, but people are adverse to change and, like anything in marketing, takes time.

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Convincing people takes time.

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So I really had to learn how to pitch ideas.

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I had to learn how to look at data and show what's working and what's not working.

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But before we could even get to that, I really had to put out a three-step plan for us in general, and the first plan was to actually establish branding for the theater.

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We had a logo, we had colors that we had to use, we had some guidelines, but we didn't really have a brand and we didn't have a reputation that was known beyond our historical reputation or maybe the more immediate reputation with our patrons.

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Because we didn't have that greater presence online that other theaters were starting to have or generate, or because they had actual marketing teams and wider presence, they were able to establish a lot quicker and faster, stronger, better right.

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So that first step was branding.

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Second step was establishing actual digital marketing channels and establishing what we were going to be doing with those channels.

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And then the third part was elevating our content overall and the branding.

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I want to say that was probably the easier and more fun element, because nobody really understood exactly what I was doing in the beginning.

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But they gave me access to Facebook.

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I created a page.

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They gave me access to Twitter.

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I updated the very pink and off-brand colors to align with who we were, found ways to talk about us that aligned with the messaging we wanted to convey.

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And then I had to establish the other channels.

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So I created an Instagram for us.

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I realized that our email marketing was severely outdated, eric, we were still coding our emails and our emails were this awful black background with red text.

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The text was bleeding on everybody's computer screens.

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Nobody was really opening this email.

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It was in pages, multiple pages.

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You had to scroll through the email and we weren't really generating any value with it.

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So it took some convincing and finding the right platform, but I was able to pitch a drag and drop builder.

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I got more buy-in along the way and we updated our really outdated, awful website and created something a lot more dynamic, mobile-friendly, accessible, so that we could present ourselves in the best way across the channels where people could find us.

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And so those two steps that was a process and a journey, but we had to do those two steps first before we tried to do anything else.

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And it really took whole company buy-in too.

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I don't think that marketing can work, operate or have an impact in a vacuum and you can't, as one person, do it all.

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So getting leadership buy-in was key.

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Getting the board and their buy-in was absolutely important, because they were the ones who were helping craft the overall strategy for the theater, helping to solicit funds for donations and establishing a presence for us in other arenas outside of the marketing.

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And so those things needed to happen first.

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And then we needed to get to elevating the actual content as well Photos, the show production photos, the content we were using for flyers and for mailers.

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And then the online content was equally, if not more so, important, because a patron, an audience member, is going to judge the quality of your show, your performance, on the content that they see first.

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I imagine we all do.

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Whether it's product or service that we're selling or promoting, people are going to look to the promotional material and create an idea, an assumption, an opinion about how they think that is going to change their life or offer them an experience and what that experience might be.

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And so we really had to focus on making sure that we aligned what we were presenting and showing and sharing in person with what we were sharing and presenting and showing online, and that was one of the bigger challenges for a couple of reasons.

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So, when it comes to theater, if you have an equity show, you have to be mindful of what content you're taking from the equity actors.

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You have to be mindful that you're not sharing anything that's too revealing about the plot or the outcome of the show, and you want to keep that consideration in mind as you're creating that content, as you're also publishing it online too, because you still want to engage peak curiosity while giving audiences that behind the scenes glimpse that they love so much too.

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They want to be involved in the action, and so it's a bit of a delicate balance, but it's still important, and it's important to have that wealth of content and become that content machine.

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But, surprisingly, there was pushback with video content especially, and you might not think that from theater professionals or anyone artistic.

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You might assume that they want to be creating video content or on camera or sharing what they're doing, but I think, especially at that time, there was a lot of hesitation around theater putting out video.

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And how do you do that?

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How do you do that in the best way that isn't giving away the story, the plot, the surprise?

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How do you do that and show the actors in the best light too?

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Theater acting is very different from film acting, and rightfully so.

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Those understandings, considerations were all valid and I wanted to make sure that we also understood.

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Audiences are consuming content online a certain way and they're going to keep consuming this content.

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It will change.

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Algorithms change, platforms change, but the trend is video change.

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Algorithms change, platforms change, but the trend is video.

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So how do we leverage this to promote and keep our audiences engaged overall?

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So those were the three areas that we really needed to work on and focus on.

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It was also a challenge working with limited resources for working in a theater where you don't have a whole lot of money for the technology and the tools that you might need to use.

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There was no chat GPT.

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Back then.

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We were working on Macs and PCs that didn't talk to each other.

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There were instances when the internet wasn't connecting, and so that can all be very challenging when you're trying to establish digital marketing and everything is online.

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But I think we were able to form a really strong team to help facilitate and implement the marketing overall, and the impact that we saw was better audience engagement, better open rates on our email, because we were able to segment and target our audience with more personalized messaging.

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We were able to establish stronger connection between the box office, which was sales, and our marketing program, because the two of those elements need to function and align together in order to have a cohesion, and so we could then take that model and that system and enhance it and improve it with automations, with better CRN, better insight into what our audiences wanted and the data to theft that up.

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So there were a lot of changes that happened along the way, but there were a couple of ways that we were able to impact not just the bottom line, not just driving ticket sales, but also developing a plan was crucial, because there was no plan before, there was no marketing strategy, no real philosophy or direction, and because we were able to establish that then we could look and see what's working, what's not working and find better directions for our marketing overall and align that with the overall strategic plan for the theater itself and then elevating outdated materials.

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That was really helpful for our image and our branding but also gave us that additional boost in the arts and culture sector of our area and overall because people started to pay attention to us more and remember who we are and who we were, because we had that connection online as well as that physical presence.

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And then for us as a nonprofit organization, we had to be online because we needed better opportunities for fundraising, for driving donations, for tracking donations and reaching our donors, to not just get more support but also show our gratitude and appreciation for them and offer them whether it's an important newsletter that's sharing info that they get first, or we're giving them content directed just to them to build a stronger connection there and better opportunity for us to see what our donors were paying attention to, what was important to them, at the same time as looking at our audience overall and seeing what were they attracted to, what do they want to watch, what do they want to engage with?

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And then reestablishing that stronger presence in the community is key, and we had to remember that social media is social.

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I think everyone needs to remember social media is social right.

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So it's a great opportunity to build a connection online with your patrons.

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If you're a business that's for profit, or a larger corporation or an individual brand, you're making that connection with your audience, with your customers, with your clients.

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The same thing is true for theater, and that allowed us to reach out to the community in a greater way too, because then we could invite others in the community to partner with us and we could show off who they are and what they do and how they benefit our community as a whole, whether it's through event partnerships or sponsorships of our shows, donations, et cetera.

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We were able to leverage that online presence to have a greater impact in the community at large, and I think it also helped with relationship building, whether it was relationship with our audience, the children in our children's theater, their parents, the adults in our classes.

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We had a much greater connection to people and ultimately, that's, I think, what theater is about building that connection and sharing that storytelling and connecting on that human level.

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So one of the big takeaways that I always want nonprofits, but especially arts nonprofits, to keep in mind is you don't want to lose that human element, because I think we're all searching for that connection and that humanity, and the more that we enter into an AI world and look to find solutions and technology which is great and look to find solutions and technology which is great I also want people to keep in mind that the personal, authentic aspect of social media is still important and relevant and people still crave that connection.

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So that's my story.

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I was able to use all of that experience and take it with me beyond, not just theater and nonprofit organizations.

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But after I went to grad school, got a little bit more formal marketing training.

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I took that into some larger theaters who were already established in digital marketing and we were able to create more video content.

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We were able to establish actual video production teams within the theater, which was really cool and very valid and important.

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And then I was able to take that and what I had learned and experienced along the way to build scalable marketing operation systems now for my current role so that not just nonprofits but businesses in general can enhance their digital marketing or enter into a world that's already gotten started.

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So how can we help accelerate that for them and how can we create a space for your business to stand out in a more personalized, customized way.

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Great story.

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So it seems like all those challenges that you were able to overcome.

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It seems like the main theme of it was taking the passion that people have for theater in real life.

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People are passionate about it because they're acting in it.

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It's a entertainment form that people are very passionate about.

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Like you were saying, people donate money to it because they feel very passionate about it.

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The community attends because they're very passionate about seeing that entertainment done in a very good way, and so translating that passion into how do we market this in a digital world that has been evolving in the last decade, I think, is what a lot of businesses have really struggled to do of how do we take the passion we have for something in real life and do digital marketing for it without sacrificing all those things that you mentioned, and so I think that is very useful for many organizations to think about it, and even though we are at this point in time, probably 15 years into social media, a lot of industries organizations are still thinking through how to do it at scale, because it is so difficult.

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I don't think there's anything that's easy about what you described right.

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Do I have this right.

00:19:19.083 --> 00:19:20.165
Yeah, absolutely, eric.

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I agree.

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You summarized that beautifully.

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It's always been a challenge, right.

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It's just a different challenge now.

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I think the challenge then was the buy-in adopting social media marketing especially, but adopting digital marketing when you don't have the resources whether it's human resources to implement on a plan or even create a plan, whether it's the tools or technology, that can be a huge hindrance to even getting started.

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And today, when I see with clients who are poor profit, there are the challenges of it's oversaturated.

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I still don't have the tools, the technology, the human resources to implement this and I'm overwhelmed because I don't know where to begin.

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And I think that can be a huge roadblock for folks who know they need to be on social media or they need to establish stronger marketing channels, but they don't know how to get started.

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And that's where I think we also can feel a little disjointed from the importance of it or we might give up.

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Sometimes what I hear from clients now is well, tiktok might be leaving and I don't really see the value in social media.

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I don't want to be online.

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That's some of the more extreme answers that I've heard, and they might have something going on in their business that prevents them from spending the time or the energy to get to know how truly valuable it is to be online and have that presence.

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And I can understand that and I understand business owners are busy and they're running their business.

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But you do have to either hire that person to have that internal marketing team, hire that agency, hire that consultant to help you get started.

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Otherwise, you're going to have a very hard time working and operating when the competition is online already and they've already established a presence.

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Right, you can't afford to not be online when your competition is online.

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But because of all the trends that we're seeing, because of all the information and content overload, I can see it's paralyzing for people.

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So challenges have changed, but I think people are still stuck in that position of do I even want to get started when the bandwagon is already gone?

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The train has left the station?

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Yeah, if anything, now it's more complicated because there's more channels People have to think about not just Twitter and Instagram, but, like you said, they have to think about TikTok and they have to think about what's our YouTube strategy, which is very different, and they still have to struggle through the logistics of each of these channels and how it translates.

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Does it translate in a way that makes sense for their business?

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So I think it might be even more confusing.

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Like you were saying, today, although the issues are different than it was in the early days of social media, it's now that it's more mature.

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People are struggling with things like is it just full of bots?

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And issues like that.

00:22:34.884 --> 00:22:51.484
So I guess final thoughts on what do you recommend, given these circumstances, to business leaders today about taking on digital marketing and the environment.

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We're in now to overcome these challenges.

00:22:55.170 --> 00:22:56.172
I love that question.

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So first I would establish what's your brand, who are you, what are you about, what do you want to be known for?

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And then what's the solution that you offer to your clients or your customers, how do you help them, what's the pain point that they're going through and how does your business serve them and provide the answer.

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Once you figure that out and you understand the messaging around that, and then you take that and you understand visually what your brand looks like and how you're going to communicate that, then I always have encouraged people, regardless for the last 10 plus years make sure that you are only on the channels that you can handle.

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So if it's really just you and you are doing your own marketing, you're crafting your own campaigns, then pick two, pick three channels that you feel confident your audience are going to find you on and look for you on.

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That could be YouTube.

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I think YouTube is a really great place to be on.

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Right now.

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With YouTube Shorts, tiktok might feel a little up in the air, so you might not be willing to put any type of energy or investment in TikTok now if you haven't before, but I would find a channel like Instagram Facebook as two viable channels.

00:24:18.542 --> 00:24:25.540
Everybody's arguing on threads about Instagram algorithms, so I can understand where there might be some hesitation there.

00:24:25.540 --> 00:24:27.296
But pick two, pick three.

00:24:27.296 --> 00:24:28.996
Where's your audience at?

00:24:28.996 --> 00:24:30.676
You have to know your audience first.

00:24:30.676 --> 00:24:33.914
That's part of understanding who you are and who you're trying to reach.

00:24:33.914 --> 00:24:36.621
But pick two or three channels first.

00:24:36.621 --> 00:24:38.271
Don't try to be on every platform.

00:24:38.271 --> 00:24:51.112
If you hear of new platforms that are coming out and you want to test them out, great, but be consistent on the first platforms that you started on before you expand your channels.

00:24:51.112 --> 00:24:56.618
Otherwise, I think you're going to have a really hard time being consistent with your marketing in general.

00:24:56.618 --> 00:25:17.280
I will add to that you should have a really strong website, because you need to be driving your traffic to your own space, and you also need to have a really strong understanding of what that story that you're trying to tell is on your website as well as on your social media marketing channels.

00:25:17.280 --> 00:25:22.936
They have to be cohesive, so make sure that you're aligning those channels with your website.

00:25:23.377 --> 00:25:26.971
And then, third, as third part of that, it's your content.

00:25:26.971 --> 00:25:30.920
Right, and I think we overthink content and content creation.

00:25:30.920 --> 00:25:36.099
Especially with all the tools, technology out there, it can be very hard to know how do I start?

00:25:36.099 --> 00:25:39.795
I don't know how to edit, I'm not great on camera this, that or the other.

00:25:39.795 --> 00:25:44.304
Start by what Gary Vee says document what you do.

00:25:44.304 --> 00:25:47.333
That's the easiest thing I think you can do.

00:25:47.333 --> 00:25:49.796
That's something that we did in theater.

00:25:49.796 --> 00:26:06.596
I don't know if Gary V me had said prior to or not, but when you document what you do, your process, how you help people, you have instant content right there and you can leverage that content to help others by promoting the educational aspect of it.

00:26:06.596 --> 00:26:08.038
Don't overthink your content.

00:26:08.038 --> 00:26:10.631
Document record still.

00:26:10.631 --> 00:26:11.334
Post photos.

00:26:11.334 --> 00:26:18.863
I think photos are still great pieces of content too, but leverage what you have first before you try to expand.

00:26:21.010 --> 00:26:22.413
I think that's all great advice.

00:26:22.413 --> 00:26:24.157
Really appreciate it.

00:26:24.157 --> 00:26:36.756
Thank you very much for being on the show today sharing your story, and I'm going to link to your website and your LinkedIn and the show notes in case people want to get in touch and learn more.

00:26:36.756 --> 00:26:39.061
We really appreciate you being with us today.

00:26:39.061 --> 00:26:46.506
And remember digital marketing transformation is never easy, but it should always be fun.

Rebecca Vickers Profile Photo

Rebecca Vickers

VP Operations

Rebecca Vickers is a dynamic professional with experience in both digital marketing and operations. As VP of Operations at FMO Media, she thrives on coaching her team, cultivating client relationships, devising successful strategies, and developing effective systems. A firm believer in empowering others, Rebecca's goal is to foster stronger leaders, cohesive teams, and well-rounded individuals. Rebecca is a proud alumna of Loyola University Maryland (B.A.) and Villanova University (M.A.).