Maximizing Marketing ROI with Strategic Focus, Evolving Tactics, and Doing More with Less

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Welcome to today's episode.

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Today we are talking about marketing as an investment and how to get the best ROI on your marketing, and we have a fantastic guest today, Caroline Crawford.

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Welcome to the show.

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Hi Eric, Thank you so much for having me.

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I'm excited to be here.

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So why don't we start off by you sharing just a minute or two about who you are, what you've done, what you're doing?

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Yeah, thanks for having me.

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Yeah, so I've been in marketing communications for over 13 years now.

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I started Cultivate Communications and we specialize in developing and optimizing marketing functions for businesses by providing focus and structure around their brand, sales and marketing and making sure all of that's connected.

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My specialty, my wheelhouse, the reason I love marketing, is because of how it can all all these different components connect and really great at the vision of it all and then as well as how do we bring it all to life and bringing that brand's voice to life.

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That is very important.

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That is a challenge that many businesses face.

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How do you bring it to life?

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How do you get that momentum?

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So we're ready to be inspired.

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Why don't we start by you sharing a story about some of the best marketing you've done, the marketing that you're the most proud of?

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Yeah, I think something that happens a lot with businesses is that they try to do too much when it comes to marketing and it ends up diluting their message and their branding and their strategy, like it's.

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They think it's all connected because they're spread out in all these areas, but ultimately it's leading back to essentially not providing a lot of great results for them, and then they're starting to burn out, they're starting to get feel hopeless.

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So I did have a company that was in the wellness space, that they were doing everything across the board Anything you can think of posting videos on YouTube, on every social media channel, publishing articles, doing the email newsletters, all the things and they were like my marketing is just not working.

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And they had invested in marketing before and just were doing all the recommendations that whatever, whoever they were working with before me were doing.

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And so by the time they reached me, they were really fed up.

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I was essentially their last dying hope, if you will.

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I was essentially their last dying hope, if you will.

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And upon talking with them, I started asking questions what do you like doing?

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Where do you feel that you're able to get more of your message out?

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Just trying to pinpoint, putting less attention on the specifics of the channels that they were working with, at least for right then in that moment and asking and trying to get to understand them and their brand, and what I started to uncover was that, because they're in wellness, the articles made a lot of sense for them and their approach to their YouTube videos weren't really aligning.

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Just because of how they were approaching them it was very forced, so therefore, anyone watching it it was not a very compelling video and things like that.

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Their Instagram.

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They weren't putting thought into how they can prolong the effort that their articles provided them and really bring it into something that fueled these other channels.

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I was actually talking to the CEO and I was asking her these personal questions what do you like to do personally?

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Where do you like to spend your time in terms of these things that you're creating?

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And she even stopped me at one point saying I don't know, just tell me what to do.

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And I was like you are here because you followed everyone else's advice without really understanding who your brand was and what you like to do and what was authentic.

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Double down on what it is that actually aligns with your brand and that allows you to better communicate your messaging to better educate the audience that you're with, and we're going to cut out everything that doesn't align.

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So I actually we scaled her efforts, I think, by 50% at least, so where she was no longer burned out, her team was no longer burned out and they everything had a purpose of her articles started to fuel her emails, her we scaled back on certain social media channels, the YouTube videos and the strategy around that shifted to be a supplement or amplifier of the articles as, like that, core content driver and within a month of scaling her efforts back 50% versus adding she started seeing an increase in engagement in her emails, engagement on her social media posts, leads coming in and I think it just goes to show that, like, sometimes less is more in all of this.

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So that is one of my most favorite marketing stories in all of this.

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So that is one of my most favorite marketing stories.

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So the privilege of focus is what you're saying, because if you try to do everything, you're really a master of nothing, right?

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Yeah, in some ways yeah.

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And it seems counterintuitive too.

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Yeah the temptation is to get out there and do everything, because people have different experiences and will give advice say the email marketing has been great for me, or Google advertising has been great for me, or blogging has been great for me.

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And the reality is that for different businesses, certain channels or certain tactics can be their number one biggest driver.

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But that doesn't necessarily apply that it should be the case for all businesses.

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And the thing that I've seen is that if people look across all the things they're doing, like you were saying, everything may directionally work, like you may win business across a lot of channels, but when you look at the ROI or marketing as an investment, what you start to see is you start to see the ROI in certain channels or certain tactics is much higher than others.

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The idea to focus on the ones where it's really working.

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Some of the ways I talk to people about this is tell me what's actually working the best.

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What are the one or two things you're doing that is working the best?

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It's a different flavor of what you asked of what do you like doing, because if you don't like doing it, then it's probably not going to be the best channel.

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Yeah, for sure, and I think people look see ROI as like almost it's very quantitative, understandably.

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But for in the case of just these articles, you invest more time, money and energy into creating these articles.

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You invest more time, money and energy into creating these articles.

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That articles then makes it quicker and less, probably costs less and probably more effective to fuel all these other channels, because you can then repurpose that article into an email, repurpose that into social media posts and it can just fuel all these different places and be very cohesive.

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And so the ROI could look very different than what I think some business leaders have in mind.

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Yeah, I think that it's interesting how marketing is evolving and that the channels and the tactics that people use today, the ROI they can get from those things, is also evolving.

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For example, advertising is getting a lot more expensive on Google, on LinkedIn, and so that's something people need to think about is does it still make as much sense as it did even a couple of years ago?

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Other channels like email marketing.

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It used to be that you could send emails to people even if they hadn't opted in, and you would still get a pretty good result, but now things have evolved, that's not really a viable tactic anymore by the numbers, and so I think people have to really think about what makes sense is how things are evolving in marketing as well.

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I think yes, in the sense that the way that marketing is evolving, it's so much more competitive.

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You are competing for less time in the consumer's eyes for attention, and there's so much out there.

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Consumers are being bombarded, and that's why a lot of the ad platforms, like LinkedIn or all the social media platforms, do bidding structures, because they know it's competitive.

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However, I also think that it's in the case of I think, understanding how certain channels work or how certain marketing efforts will work, is really important to make it, to understand what's going to be our next move here.

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So, for instance and the reason being is because you may not be ready for advertising is still a great, can be still a very good use of marketing budget if it's done well, but if you don't have the foundation that allows those leads to come in and actually streamline that process, then advertising it's just like you're just catching a net and you have no idea where the fish are.

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It's just you have nowhere to catch them.

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And so I think there's a balance in keeping up with the evolution of what's happening with marketing, but also a deep understanding of what each of these channels and options will actually bring you against your goals.

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And then also.

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Are you ready for that?

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What are you?

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What kind of foundation do you have in place to be able to better support these efforts that you're investing in?

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I think the foundation is really important.

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The example you said around advertising if you don't have the foundation of a great website and great landing pages and the right workflows for people to become a customer from the website, all of those foundational things need to be there before you're ready to start spending and investing a lot of money in advertising 100%.

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I think a lot of the times when you're seeing no ROI, it could be a strategy problem, but the strategy can be adjusted easily a lot of the times.

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But if you are getting some things but they're not turning into sales, that is a foundation problem, that is a kink in your sales process.

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And part of the problem you mentioned is marketing is pretty hard.

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It's probably getting harder in terms of complexity and competition and costs, and it seems like that's one of the main challenges for businesses is there's so many different areas of marketing and some of them have gotten harder and more complex in recent years.

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For example, I'll give another channel that I think is evolving pretty rapidly is SEO.

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Some people are saying it's Armageddon for SEO because of how Google is changing, with AI, summaries and videos at the top, and it's much harder to get near the top of the search results in Google and for a long time a lot of businesses who were doing blogs or articles relied on that, and the impact for companies seems to vary, so it's not like across the board tough for everybody, but for some people it is and other people it's actually a benefit.

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So I think the question is how do companies navigate the complexity as all of these channels evolve?

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What do you suggest when you're working with clients to navigate that?

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I think you have to have a core understanding and goal in mind to what are we really trying to accomplish and what's our biggest priority, because there is a difference in the types of marketing that you do, where certain channels will lend itself better and therefore the results are going to be different.

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But if your goal is getting leads, but you're posting on Instagram and not doing so in a way that's designed to convert or try to capture leads and convert leads, but you're posting on Instagram and not doing so in a way that's designed to convert or try to capture leads and convert leads, then you're going to say we're getting followers.

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So, technically, what you're doing on social is successful in the standards of social media, but it's not converting to these larger business goals.

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So I think you have to balance those priorities.

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But I think, when it comes to the complexities and SEO is a great example I keep going back to this, like understanding what you're about to get yourself into.

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The reason being is because something like SEO, where the Google changes every other day, like you need someone dedicated to SEO who's really well versed in understanding how frequent it changes and how to be competitive and always being proactive, and that's just one example right, and so that is a long gain.

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If you're going to invest in SEO, yes, you could set up some good foundation that's going to help and support you.

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But if you're trying to be really aggressive, especially if you're like a local business, then you have to be willing to invest in SEO over and over again, whereas if you're trying to be really aggressive, especially if you're like a local business, then you have to be willing to invest in SEO over and over again, whereas if you're a service-based business you operate online you can maybe do again like a one-time investment in, like a strong keyword strategy, and then maybe optimize.

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It's not as aggressive, but maybe you need to be more aggressive in how you approach LinkedIn, for instance.

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So I think it varies based on what type of company you have, what your goals are and, again, a deep understanding of what each of these channels or marketing portals will do for you, because it's going to vary.

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And then again, just going back to my example, where it sounds very complex and it sounds very complicated because there are so many pieces, but the more you can focus on, okay, this is our initiative, let's say, in the case of the example I provided earlier, articles are initiative.

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That's where we're going to spend a good chunk of time and investment to make sure we're putting out kick-ass articles.

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We're also then going to use those articles to fuel other things, because that one article that you spend and this is where potentially SEO and a blog writer can come into play and you can stretch out that investment that article can fuel 10 social media posts and three emails, and so, therefore, you've got almost an entire month of content just from one article.

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That's fueling, and so that's how you can simplify it in terms of okay, we are on all these channels, but there is still that sort of through line because we're repurposing some things.

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Yeah, I think that's a great example.

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One of the things you talk about is how to do marketing when you have limited resources, and I think that's a great example.

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One of the things you talk about is how to do marketing when you have limited resources, and I think that example plays into that, because to build a full stack marketing team they can do volumes of things across all of the possible channels can cost like a couple million dollars for a B2B company, for example.

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Most people don't have that amount of money to invest, and so that example you just shared is a great one of how do companies do more when they don't really have as much to invest.

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But broadly, what do you suggest when companies don't have a huge budget or have to be more guerrilla in marketing?

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How do they think about it?

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Get really clear on your goals and focus on the things that are going to achieve those goals faster.

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So, again, if you are a B2B company and you're like I need leads which is less important than brand awareness, right as just an example then you're going to be really scrappy in how you tackle something like LinkedIn.

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You can't just post.

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You tackle something like LinkedIn.

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You can't just post and hope something comes through.

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You have to be very proactive in okay, I'm going to actually use LinkedIn Sales Navigator and do an outreach strategy to start making connections with people and start building my network.

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That's just one example.

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If you're a local company and maybe like a special offer for new customers or whatever that looks like, it really goes back to your goals and what is the biggest priority for you right now.

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Everything else can fall to the wayside, because that's when, if you try to do too much too fast without that proper foundation, you're going to be spending money on ads that are not going to actually bring you the traffic that you want, or you're going to be spending money on ads that are not going to actually bring you the traffic that you want, or you're going to be falling into a strategy that, okay, it's a good strategy.

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It's not that it's bad or not, that it isn't completely helpful, but it's not accomplishing what you want.

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Now, and I think a lot of the times, people can get a little tripped up in their goals because they want everything.

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Everyone wants more money, everyone wants more sales.

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That's always the goal.

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What is most critical to you right now?

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Is it sales, or can you lend itself to more brand awareness, brand trust, whatever that looks like, and that's where you just have to have those conversations and that clarity.

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Yeah, so prioritization is the theme, along with having a clear goal right.

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Yeah, and focus, really just focus, focus and structure.

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So let me put you on the spot with my final question, which is prediction for where things are going in marketing the rest of this year.

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Do you have any thoughts about how marketing is evolving and what marketers should do as a result of that trend?

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Yeah, I think more and more tools are going to pop up.

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Ai-based tools are going to pop up to help you do marketing faster.

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And I say that with quotes because again they're going to hook you.

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They're going to say I can make your life easier.

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And it may not.

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And especially if you're working on a scrappy budget, you have to be really particular about where you're investing your time, money and energy, even if it's a platform.

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I think AI is fantastic in this example and it's been talked about in a lot of marketing spaces, but I think the principles stay the same of marketing in that, at the end of the day, you have to just figure out how you connect with your audience.

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So keep focused on that, but watch out, see what tools can potentially help you and just use discernment between them all, because we'll see differences in how AI is embedded into our social media platforms.

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I think that AI is going to steal the show, I think, at least for another year, before something new kind of comes into play.

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Yeah, I think we're in the golden age of marketing, where there's more tools than we could ever possibly consume or need, but finding some good ones can be really helpful.

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Good advice, I think that, in terms of people getting momentum with their marketing, you had a offer that you wanted to share.

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Yes, definitely.

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I would love to offer all the listeners of the Remarkable Marketing Podcast half off my marketing momentum sessions.

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This is a 75-minute intensive designed to pinpoint, overcome whatever obstacles are blocking marketing success.

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So if you're in a position where you need to do something with marketing, your marketing needs to pivot in some way, but you just have no idea where to start because, again, it can feel very overwhelming and complex.

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This is something that's going to help you and provide that clarity for you, and so we'll put.

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I sure, post a code in the show notes, but the code will be remarkable and the link will be in there as well.

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Awesome, if you want to get some momentum, check that out.

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Appreciate you being with us today and sharing your story and these ideas.

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We're going to link to these resources in the show notes so you can get there easily and contact Caroline if you'd like to learn more.

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Caroline, thanks so much for being with us today.

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We appreciate it.

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Thank you so much for having me, eric.