Imagine Making your Company's Social Media Presence into a Sales Juggernaut

Speaker 1: 0:01

You're in the marketing world and you're looking for inspiration, or you're a business leader who wants to understand what good marketing looks like. You're busy. You don't have time to sit around listening to a rambling 3 hour podcast. We get it. This is the Remarkable Marketing Podcast, where we celebrate the marketing rock stars that deliver truly remarkable marketing, when you'll hear short interviews with marketing execs who share stories about the best marketing they've ever done, how it delivered a huge impact and how they overcame all the challenges to make it happen. If you aspire to be remarkable, you'll walk away with ideas on how to do truly epic marketing. Getting right to the content of what you need for busy professionals, this is the Remarkable. Marketing Podcast. Now your host, Eric Eden.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Welcome to the Remarkable Marketing Podcast. Our guest today is Hannah Billiette. She is a director with Ugly Mug Marketing and she has worked with clients on over 4,000 advertising campaigns, so I thought it'd be great for her to come on and share with us today some stories of great work that she's done with her clients. Welcome to the show, yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:21

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

Speaker 2: 1:24

So first I have to ask where did the name Ugly Mug Marketing come from?

Speaker 3: 1:29

Everybody asks that question and it is a great question. So our owner and founder, Wayne Mullins he is a marketing guru in and of himself but he loves to read, and a famous marketer named David Obelie once said I'd rather have an ad that is ugly and gets results than a pretty one that does nothing and I'm paraphrasing there. Those weren't his exact words, but it was along those lines, and so that really inspired Wayne to come up with the name Ugly Mug Marketing, because our whole shtick is that we're all about results. So when someone hires us, it comes to work with us. It's because they're after a certain goal, it is because they have set aggressive goals for this quarter or this year and they're wanting to grow and scale their business. And we really pride ourselves in being a good partner with entrepreneurs and businesses of all sizes and helping them achieve their goals and getting those results.

Speaker 2: 2:25

I love that and I saw that you've tripled your team over the last four years there, so you must be driving some great results to get that sort of growth and build up that sort of great team. So tell us a story about some of the marketing that you've done with your clients that you're most proud of.

Speaker 3: 2:44

Yeah, One of my favorite clients. You're not supposed to have favorite clients. I think they're really my favorite client, not because I'm really passionate about what they do, which is HVAC, but I'm really passionate about getting them results. And I think the story of them coming to Ugly Mug and how our relationship with them has evolved is really a testament to the power of generating results and also having good relationships. Killed as well, I guess. But this client came to us, gosh four years ago now, almost five years ago and they said, hey, we are wanting to grow and scale our HVAC locations in Louisiana and beyond. They have about 50 locations across the Gulf Coast now. But when they first came to us, they gave us just a handful of locations and they said, hey, we're not currently generating any revenue from Facebook. We might be, but we don't have a way to actually attribute leads or phone calls or anything that's coming in to posts or anything that's happening on Facebook. They also had zero Facebook strategy whatsoever. They were throwing spaghetti at the wall, so to speak, posting here and there, posting on Valentine's Day and so forth, but not actually intentionally trying to generate revenue. And I find that the story resonates with a lot of people because they find themselves really doing the same thing, or, after they hear me talk about this client, they're like man, I have been doing that. I haven't really been creating content or ads in such a way, that kind of tied back to my ultimate goal, which is to generate a million dollars in revenue or to grow by 50% or whatever those goals may be. And so when this client came to us again, no true strategy, but they gave us a month and they have an eight location that they gave us to start with, and they said, hey, help us build a strategy that works, Prove to us that we can generate revenue on social media, specifically on Facebook, and then we'll give you more locations and grow and scale from there. You have a month, and so the pressure was on, and typically, if someone comes to us and says this, we're like your expectations are unrealistic and we try to temper them down and give them a realistic timeline of how long it would take to achieve their goal. But with this client in particular, they weren't afraid to invest in the ad spend, and so we said, all right, let's do it. So over the course of a month, we developed an organic content strategy that essentially positioned them as experts in each of the regions within Louisiana for each location, and a lot of this was educational content or tips from your technicians and using actual photos of technicians that were on the staff at each location. That was really really key and important. But where the magic really happened and we were able to tie revenue dollars to actual results from Facebook and make that connection and bridge that gap was when we ran lead generation campaigns on Facebook. So maybe it's not HVAC that I'm so passionate about, but maybe it's lead gen that I'm super passionate about, Because there is this immediate gratification when you're generating a lead music lead generation campaign. Now, for those of you who are listening and you're like what the heck is a lead generation campaign? Is this just a bunch of fake bots or people filling out a form and then I'm going to call them and they're not going to answer. But the job it's not that at all. A lead generation form is a form that's native to Facebook, meaning it is a Facebook form. We're not driving traffic away from the Facebook platform or any of the meta platforms. We're keeping them on that, which Facebook ultimately rewards us for because, at the end of the day, their goal is to keep people on the platform for a longer period of time, and so we kind of played their game, because, of course, all of these HVAC locations have websites. Like we could be pushing traffic there and trying to get people to schedule appointments on the website, but by utilizing the lead gen form. Facebook really favored that and gave us a better cost for lead and we were able to create a system that ultimately helped their customer service representatives convert those leads. So, using some of the offers that they were already promoting on their website, we just took that same language, created some fun graphics, did some split testing with different headlines, and one of the offers was a $69 furnace tune-up that we were running. It was a December, of course, along the Gulf Coast it's not that cold, but furnace tune-ups are still in port in during that time of the year and so we took that offer, ran it for the month of December and generated I don't even remember how many leads we were able to generate maybe 100 across those eight locations. That was enough proof to them. By providing that that pay, this works From those 100 leads, their CSRs were able to create again that process to follow up with them and to turn them into book jobs. Now, fast forward four years. There have been a lot of new developments in technology and AI and automation that have enabled us to scale this beast from just those eight locations to now about 50 locations that we manage for that one region. One of the tools that we use is Zapier. If you are not familiar with Zapier, Zapier is an amazing automation tool that takes so much busy work and connect point A to point B without you ever having to think twice about it, other than the initial setup. The way that we use Zapier for this HVAC client in particular and all of their locations is the ad will be running for the $69 tune-up or $100 off any drain cleaning or whatever the proprietary offer is. Someone fills up that for Then, rather than us having to go into Facebook downloading those leads every day, creating this lag time and all this busy work for us to then download, send it to the customer service reps at their mercy of the follow-up, we've integrated things seamlessly into Service Titan, which is their CRM for lack of a better term where they book all of their jobs and all of their leads flow through anyway. The lead comes in through Facebook and then it automatically goes to Service Titan shows up as a booking so that when the customer service reps log in for the day, all of those new leads show up right on their dashboard and all they have to do is click, dial out and try to connect with the customer in order to schedule the appointment Through their system. They can even follow up via email or via text message as well. We've reduced the busy work of us having to go and log into Facebook every day and download those leads. We've also created less friction for the customer because they're not really waiting around for very long, because we all know that we can hardly wait two days for an Amazon. It should get delivered these days, Let alone wait three, four, five days for someone to follow up with us about a service for our HVAC system. We don't want to do that. By the time someone's waited that long, they've probably called the next person or they've completely forgotten that they've even filled out the form. Over time we've been tracking conversions of those leads to we can pull reports directly from their system, which we weren't able to do when we had that very first eight locations four or five years ago. It's been really remarkable to see the impacts that it's had on their business, going from generating no revenue and ultimately having no strategy for social media for all of their HVAC locations, to now scaling and growing, having multiple offers running at one tide, integrating seamlessly into the systems and processes that they already have in place with their customer service reps, and then seeing those conversions come through book jobs, new installations. The return on investment is astronomical, truly, because even just one of the 10 leads, let's say, that comes through for a new HVAC system converts that can be as much as $15,000 on one unit revenue-wise. When we're spending anywhere from $500 to $1,000 for their ad spend, it's not big money either. For each location it's anywhere from that $500 to $1,000. We just scale and grow from there. If something's performing super well, we'll throw more money at it or we'll suggest it's the if the budget allows. But it's incredible what you can do with these lead generation forms. It's been really fun. That's been probably one of my most proud moments and proud clients, proud marketing accomplishments during my time at Ugly Bug.

Speaker 2: 11:39

That's great. What I like about this story is that it is a regular business. 99 percent of businesses are regular businesses. When paid social works for regular businesses, like an HVAC company with 50 locations in Louisiana, then that, I think, lets people know that it can work for a lot of different kinds of businesses. You don't have to be a certain type of company for it to work.

Speaker 3: 12:07

Right. These lead forms can really be used for a variety of different it doesn't just have to be hey, I'm trying to sell them on a particular service. We've also used it for restaurants in growing their email list. Then they have a base of customers that they can then push offers out to, or new menu items, or give alerts about whatever events they're hosting in their restaurant as well. Or hey, it's lunchtime, are you hungry? Place your online lunch order. We've really done a great job of helping those clients as well, because we had a client that had 13,000 page likes. They were a coffee shop in bakery called Little Cakes with Big Attitude, located in Alexandria, louisiana. Okay, 13,000 Facebook likes and then only like 200, maybe 200 people on their email list. We were like guys, what happens if your Facebook account gets magically deleted tomorrow and you can't get access back? I mean, we're ultimately at all of these platforms' mercy. Like tomorrow they can say, all right, ugly mug, you can no longer have a page anymore. Okay, little Cakes with Big Attitude, no more page for you anymore. I always stress the importance of these lead generation campaigns for email list building, because now you own that information, they're willingly giving you their first name, their last name, their email address. We also, on that form, ask for their birthday, and we've used Zapier again to automatically connect that to Mailchimp, and then we send them a coupon for a free cupcake on their birthday. Like who doesn't want a free cupcake on their birthday, right, right? So that's just another example of a regular business that's also benefiting from these lead forms as well.

Speaker 2: 13:49

That's great. So two tactical things in your story that I just want to touch on is the Facebook lead forms. If I recall correctly, aside from not sending them off to another site, the other advantages within Facebook. Those lead forms normally get pre-populated, so people don't really even have to fill in their name and their phone number and their email. It's almost just like click-click if they're interested, right?

Speaker 3: 14:15

Yes, there's some beauty to that and there's also a downside. The beauty is, yes, it's less work, less friction for them. They can immediately just click through. The downfall can be it's not the right email that populates and they click through anyway, or it's not the right phone number. So there's actually a feature when you're setting up these campaigns called higher intent. It's essentially adds an extra step. After all, the pre-populated information comes through. That has them physically. It's not just a click. They have to drag their finger across and swipe to confirm that all of that information is correct. That alleviates the problem of, oh, maybe someone accidentally clicked through or accidentally filled out the form. So every lead form that we create for our clients, we always put it on higher intent because we want to ensure that we're getting the best data and the best contact information possible. That's great.

Speaker 2: 15:12

I'm a big fan of Zapier. The Zaps that get the leads to right into the CRM or the system that the company uses is pretty clutch because I think the research shows that almost it goes hand in hand. The faster that you call someone, the better the ROI is because, like you said, people move on pretty quickly, like you fill out a form and then sometimes you never hear back or you hear back like weeks later. I fill out forms that are back to people months later. Sometimes it's like I don't even remember who I am. But I think you know I have a lot of respect. When companies have a tight process where I fill out a form and they literally call me within half hour, you know it's pretty impressive and that's the sort of magic you can have. Like it just dramatically, like a 90% better conversion rate is what I've seen right?

Speaker 3: 16:05

Yes, absolutely, and that's all a part of marketing too. I think people forget that. The experience and the followup and even after you've paid and become a customer, how they feel after that's all on you too. That's all a part of the experience and we talk about that a lot with our clients and we explain to them this idea of the natural progression Taking someone for being a stranger to a friend, turning them into a customer. But ultimately the journey does not end there. We want to turn them into an evangelist. We want them to have such an amazing experience with us, from booking ease to actual service or delivery of their product. We want that to be so amazing that they go and tell their friends and family and their neighbors that everyone on Facebook about how amazing our company or our product or our service or our brand is. So that idea of hey, you actually called me back or you actually did what you said you were gonna do, is so important, because that's all a part of the marketing and a part of creating a really remarkable experience for your customers too.

Speaker 2: 17:12

That's awesome. So how would the company describe the impact of paid social on their business? After you proved it in the test and after you scaled to the 50 locations and you put these things in place, how do they think about the impact of paid social on their business now?

Speaker 3: 17:32

I think they're probably kicking themselves that they weren't doing it sooner than when they came to us, but I think there was definitely some hiccups early on in the beginning. Even though we were providing all of those leads, sometimes that follow up time wasn't quite where it needed to be because there was a little bit of friction with the customer service reps where it was like, oh, now we have to like log in and it's not all in service type and we have to go into the spreadsheet and then log and track everything there and then, if they have a customer, I have to manually put it into service type. It was like the conversions were there but they weren't as high as they are now that it is integrated so seamlessly. And so the second we learned about Zappier, we were like can we try this? And I think that's been something that they would describe as impactful is we're doing the research right? We're giving them recommendations on what offers we should run when based on data that we're actually seeing Like this type of offer performs really well during this season in this particular market at this location, right? The reality is is there's a lot of big HVAC companies like this. I mean they have locations in Louisiana, Texas, oklahoma, arkansas, mississippi and Alabama. The weather is not exactly the same there in all of those places all the time right, and so you have to be really dialed in and have the foresight to be okay. Well, we probably shouldn't be running furnace tuneups when it's still 85 degrees outside, right, and so the value is having our team actually managing and staying on top of that for them. They don't even have to think about it, right? We can give them our input and then they give us feedback based on what we're providing to them, but that in and of itself, is invaluable to their company.

Speaker 2: 19:21

So how do you think they would rank the paid social channel in terms of their business? Would they say it's one of their best channels now, where they couldn't even determine if they were getting revenue from it before?

Speaker 3: 19:35

Yeah, I would say it's one of their best channels. Probably their number one, though, would be some form of PPC or LSA ads. Those are really big with home service companies, and when someone is experiencing a plumbing emergency, for example, they're not going and looking on Facebook, and so that's why we're really intentional with our offers. We want to make sure that it's something that's a little bit evergreen for that particular season, in that no one needs a tune up, but we're creating this need for it, right, and so we're not saying do you have a plumbing emergency? That's a really inner resonate, with very, very few people, right, I think, of a plumbing emergency. They're going on Google and searching Plumber Nearest Me, and that is certainly a game of whoever calls me back first is getting my business right, so I would say this is probably in their top two of ways that they generate revenue now.

Speaker 2: 20:32

That's great, and I think about Facebook meta I guess now it was their official name. I think about their $95 billion a year in revenue, most of it from advertising, and when I see that sort of macro number, I'm like does it make sense? Are the businesses that are spending $95 billion on advertising and Facebook and Instagram? Are they getting their values worth? And when you zoom into a case study like this, it seems like a lot of people are, if they're doing all the smart things that you're saying, right?

Speaker 3: 21:09

Yeah, it is a full-time job, so to speak. A lot of people are like oh, I'm hitting boost post and I'm not getting any result. That's where I would say your couple hundred dollars, that you're contributing to the $95 billion, but maybe you're not getting out of it what you should be. And that's when I would say really do your research, really have a goal in mind when you are creating those campaigns. If your goal is to generate revenue, you have to really strongly look at that advertisement and say, all right, how much money, how many leads does it need to generate? How much revenue do I need to make as a result of this in order to justify it? Or is this ad with my goal in mind? And I'm looking at this ad, is this helping me get closer to my goal or not? And sometimes we're throwing money at things and the answer is no. It's not helping me get closer to my goal. And so, having that mindset where every dollar you're investing on any form of paid social media if it is not with the intention of getting you closer to your goal, then we might need to rethink that investment. And I'm not saying that every single advertisement needs to be by my stuff, by my stuff shop now, because there's certainly a benefit to running campaigns that are generating brand awareness or just engaging with customers as well. So don't mistake me for not running those in conjunction with the lead generation stuff. But when we're looking at ad spend, in running two campaigns, maybe for a location one's brand awareness and one's lead gen well, I'm contributing the majority of the money to the lead generation campaign and probably fewer dollars to brand awareness or engagement.

Speaker 2: 22:54

It makes sense. The one thing that I've realized and I've been running marketing programs for 20-plus years when I've gone into Facebook to actually run a campaign, it boggled my mind how hard it was to really do it. It's not an easy do-it-yourself sort of process to set these campaigns up in a way that generates the ROI which I'm guessing is a lot of the value that your clients get. And I'm not saying this just to promote ugly mug, but the reality is, if you go in there and you try to create a campaign, a paid campaign in Facebook, and try to get it to do all the various specific things that we're saying, it's pretty hard. Like I'm a reasonably technically savvy digital marketer and I go in there and I'm like, wow, they make this not easy. Is that right?

Speaker 3: 23:46

It is. That is why I think they invented the boost post button. I would be honestly so curious and I don't know if there's a way to see this but boost post-button ad revenue versus actual ads manager, campaign development, campaign ad revenue. I would be really curious because I think a lot of people who really just frankly lack the knowledge of the difference between those two tools within Meta and they're just like, oh well, this was performing well and it told me to boost it to reach more people. I'm like no, don't click the boost post button. There are so many more targeting capabilities. You can build your Facebook pixel within ads manager. Again, yes, more complicated ads manager. But are you going to get more bang for your buck going in ads manager and building out an actual campaign versus clicking boost post? Absolutely. It really is crazy how much more complicated ads manager looks versus clicking boost post. People are like I'm not going to do that, I'm just going to go click boost post. But if you take the time to actually dive in and learn how to set up a few of the objectives and really hone in on that, that could be a tremendous amount of value to use an entrepreneur and a business owner, but also as a team member within a marketing department for a larger corporation as well. I can't tell you how many times we've had people come to us and they're like, hey, I actually just the time to learn ads manager, but now I just don't have the time to do it. Now I want to hire you guys because I know you're the experts. But they ask you can tell the difference between someone who's been hitting boost post and someone who's actually taking the time to learn it. Because they ask the right kinds of questions too, even in that initial prospecting and discovery call, but all the way through the relationship as well.

Speaker 2: 25:44

So can you take away? Don't just click boost post.

Speaker 3: 25:47

If anything, everyone, if you're listening to this, if anything, please do not hit boost post. That's the takeaway.

Speaker 2: 25:56

All right, hanna. Thank you for sharing this inspiring story today that people can build a very successful business using paid social. Thank you for that example. If anybody would like to talk more with Hanna on this topic, check them out at Ugly Mug Marketing. Thanks for joining us today. Hanna Appreciate it. Thanks so much.

Speaker 3: 26:17

Eric.

Speaker 1: 26:46

And this podcast has been brought to you by the Next Generation Social Networking app, workverse. You can download and use the Workverse app for free to build your professional brand, become a paid expert advisor and discover the best business events to attend. Download the Workverse app today. See you next time on the remarkable Marketing Podcast.