Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
New episodes on Thurdays! As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, as he invites small business leaders just like you and industry experts to share their stories, challenges, and tips for finding time to be a marketer!
Today on episode 38 of the Be A Marketer podcast, you'll hear from a founder who achieved record breaking sales after focusing on the lighter side of life. And I'm sharing why doing something is better than doing nothing. This is the Be A Marketer podcast.
Chelsea Demby:Be a marketer.
Dave Charest:My name is Dave Charest, director of small business success at Constant Contact. And I've been helping small business owners like you make sense of online marketing for over 16 years. You can be a marketer, and I'm here to help. Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining me for another episode of the Be A Marketer podcast. Now back in September, we held an event in Boston for our customers and other local businesses.
Dave Charest:Now during that event, we focused on the importance of reviewing, planning, and executing your marketing to support the goals that you've set for your business. Not only is this important as you hit the busy holiday season, but also as you head into the new year. Now when it comes to marketing, I understand that two factors really may come into play for you, time and intimidation. That is, of course, finding time to actually do the marketing and getting over the fact that you may not be 100% confident in what you're doing or how to do it. Now the reality of time is that you've actually gotta block off time on your schedule for marketing.
Dave Charest:And to make it less time intensive, you should also take advantage of the technology available to you. For example, in your Constant Contact account, use the integration with Canva so you have direct access to your images without having to download them and then upload them. They'll be right in your Constant Contact account. Or connect your Shopify account, so you can easily insert products into your emails along with images, descriptions, and pricing without having to do the same work you've already done to get an email out the door. And, of course, the content generator can help save you time trying to figure out what to say in your emails.
Dave Charest:Now those are just a few examples of how to save yourself time. Now what about that intimidation factor? Well, I get it. It's easy to feel overwhelmed, especially when you have so many other things you need to do. So first, I'd like to remind you that you don't have to do everything.
Dave Charest:Instead, double down on something that may already be working for you. Maybe there's a product or service that's been selling really well for you. Perhaps that's a signal to invest some advertising dollars to get in front of more prospects. And, sure, there may be many marketing things you've been meaning to do. But instead of many things, how about you choose just one?
Dave Charest:And if you're not sure how to get started with that thing, well, don't forget, we've got a ton of resources to help get you started. How do you find them? What I like to do is just go to my favorite search engine. For example, let's say I wanna learn more about Facebook ads. Well, I'll type the phrase Facebook ads and add constant contact to it.
Dave Charest:And then you'll find a bunch of Constant Contact related things to help you out. Also, don't forget you can always pick up the phone and give us a call. It's our goal to make things as unintimidating as possible for you so you can take action and grow. Now at that Boston event, I got the opportunity to talk to some of our customers in a panel discussion. And in the conversation you're about to listen to, you'll hear the phrase progress over perfection.
Dave Charest:I love this because all you can ever do is the best you can at any given moment. And it's an important reminder as you think about your marketing efforts. Nothing will ever be perfect, but doing something gets you some results to build upon versus doing nothing, which, well, gets you nothing. So what's that marketing thing you've been meaning to do? I encourage you to take that next step.
Dave Charest:And don't forget, we're here to help. Well, friend, today's guest is Marissa Tilley, owner and founder of Lady Black Tie, a Massachusetts dress company that first opened in November 2018 as an 800 square foot retail store with 3 dressing rooms. The business, of course, has since blossomed into a fashion company with three lines of business, ecommerce, retail, and wholesale. In August of 2021, Lady Black Tie relocated to where the business now commands 12,000 square feet of warehouse and retail space. And in 2022, Lady Black Tie experienced a record breaking year selling over 68,000 dresses between its three lines of business.
Dave Charest:And in 2023, Lady Black Tie was named at number 518 on Inc's 5,000 list. Now also joining us for this conversation is Chelsea Demby. She's in charge of media and influencer relations at Lady Black Tie. Now there are a ton of tips within this conversation. I can't wait for you to hear it.
Dave Charest:So to get things going, I asked Marissa how she got started selling dresses. Well, let's pick up the conversation there.
Marissa Tilley:Lady Black Tie really started just from a dream and from a passion. Before I had Lady Black Tie, I was working downtown in a corporate job, and I just wasn't finding that that was what I really wanted to be doing in life. And, honestly, it came down to the idea of wanting to have fun every day. And I thought selling dresses would be super fun. And so when we opened Lady Black Tie, we were a small 800 square foot retail store with 3 dressing rooms.
Marissa Tilley:My husband and I went in. We painted it. He and I built the dressing rooms ourselves. And we started with prom because I thought that was super fun. And we opened in November just before prom season so that I could make my original investment money back right away and just kind of grew the marketing from there.
Marissa Tilley:It really just came down to wanting to focus on the lighter side of life every day. And not every day is a joy. However, I do try to, like, sit back and remind myself why I did this. It's just like seeing the smile on our customers' faces when they find that dress. And, what's special about prom is a lot of times is the girl, it's the first time she's seeing herself in an evening gown, and it's a really fun experience.
Marissa Tilley:She feels like a grown up. She feels really great. We have expanded into other lines. We do wedding guest, homecoming, a little bit of bridal and event, but prom was the start of how everything started with us.
Dave Charest:How does it feel now to be hitting this place where you're achieving record breaking numbers in this past year?
Marissa Tilley:I thought it would happen, but I didn't realize it happen so soon, and that really shows the power of ecommerce and how you can really scale because our brick and mortar store, you can really only reach people who are in your geographical location. We do get people who drive pretty far, but e commerce, the world is your oyster and you can really grow that way. And that's actually a lot of how we grew our email list is through our online customers.
Dave Charest:So was that a surprise to you?
Marissa Tilley:Yes. For sure. I mean, you can have a dress go viral and all of a sudden your sales are just, like, going up overnight and you can see that it was related to one post or one picture you posted or an email. And we just kinda kept doubling down on what worked and figured out what worked and what didn't work and grew from there.
Dave Charest:I guess, was ecomm something that you had planned from the start? Or was that something that you kind of found your way into?
Marissa Tilley:Before I started the business, I thought that the store was gonna be the main thing, and the e commerce was just gonna be, like, a supplement to the store. But then our business model flipped within the 1st 6 months because our e commerce started outperforming the store. And so I just kept putting a little more advertising dollars into paid ads and into social and search engine ads and email marketing and just kept scaling it from there. In the beginning, I could only put about $50 in and then I would just up it and up it and just kinda kept growing everything.
Dave Charest:Yeah. I wanna talk a little bit more specifically about some of those things in a little bit, but I think that's a interesting point because I think oftentimes people wonder, well, how much do I actually need to get started, right, in doing those things? So I think that's interesting. They're like, oh, okay. I'm starting small, but then growing with that as I'm learning and and moving along the way.
Dave Charest:Chelsea, so you two knew each other for five years. What made you wanna work at Lady Black Tie?
Chelsea Demby:Well, I was a pageant girl, and I competed at Miss USA. And if you know anything about pageants, the gown portion of pageants is huge, and you also have lots of appearances when you're a title holder. And Marissa so generously offered to, loan me dresses for events. And who doesn't wanna look amazing in a dress? And she just so happened to have the most beautiful stunning dresses.
Chelsea Demby:And that's how we really, started our relationship through that.
Dave Charest:What do you like most about what you do today?
Chelsea Demby:I really love experimenting with different marketing trends. Right now, I'm sure all of you know influencer marketing is very influential and we really predict that it's gonna keep its pace. For example, this past year, the Barbie movie came out and we actually had an influencer wear one of our dresses. So I decided to do an email blast about it. And we definitely saw results just promoting that dress, but also showing that an influencer also wore a dress to the world premiere.
Dave Charest:Marissa, how about you? Where are you challenged right now?
Marissa Tilley:As far as advertising and marketing goes, where we're challenged is, I would say, the scope of how we have to advertise and market. Because when you are selling online, people are buying the photo. They're buying what they see in a picture. A few years ago, I would say that paid ads were really dominant and you could get a really good return. I would say, like, social ads used to be able to get, like, a 9 to 1 return on your ad spend.
Marissa Tilley:2021, there was iOS update to the phone, and now at best, you could probably get, like, a three, 3 to 4 return on ad spend. Inflation also hit the back end of business side too, whereas I find that we used to advertise on one of the largest search well, we still do. We advertise with, obviously, the largest search engine, but I've noticed they're taking a bigger percentage of the sale more and more. And actually, completely unbiased, we have really leaned into our email marketing a lot especially this year because you really can't count on growing your brand just through paid advertising. You have to utilize your customer list, your existing customers to really grow and that's actually become really, really important this year especially with everything that's changing.
Dave Charest:I love to hear you say that. I mean, this is part of what
Dave Charest:we talked about in the keynote, right, is that idea of really influencing word-of-mouth and not putting all of your eggs in these kind of baskets that you don't own. Right? You don't have that, and the value of having a list that you can go to directly and, you know, influence whether or not they purchase with you again or come to do business with you is really important. So it's interesting to hear how that starts to play out in, like, a kind of real life scenario. Right?
Dave Charest:Chelsea, to you, gearing these things in terms of challenges and things going on, how does that influence the work that you do?
Chelsea Demby:Definitely experimenting. We really have honed in on using Constant Contact a lot more often than we ever have before. For example, we had a huge summer sale, and we really weren't seeing results prior because we weren't focusing as much on email marketing. But really putting that focus into email marketing, promoting our sale that we had going on, we had a huge success from that. Wouldn't you say so?
Marissa Tilley:Yeah. We were watching the orders come in and we knew they were immediately from that email, because everything they were ordering was all, like, the final sales stuff that we were put on clearance. We sent the email out, and literally the next morning, we were just, like, looking at it, and we're, like, wow. We saw the instant results.
Dave Charest:Well, to jump off that, you know, Marissa, you mentioned earlier, like, wanting to create an environment where you're having fun and doing all that. So I have to imagine, I mean, take us through it, but that's the environment you create and kind of the lifestyle, and that has to be part of the measure of success for you. Correct?
Marissa Tilley:Yes. Because buying a formal dress should be fun. You're excited for an event. Say you're going to a wedding. You're gonna see friends you haven't seen in a while.
Marissa Tilley:You really wanna feel special. You wanna look good. That's something that I always keep in the back of my mind that we wanna have a really fun customer experience shopping with us just to kinda have that be at the core of our brand.
Dave Charest:And then just in terms of what other ways you kinda measuring that success?
Marissa Tilley:I think it's important to take a long term view on business. So we've had some instances where, especially if you're selling on e commerce, where you can have a video go viral, a clip of content just blow up and you're running out of a dress. You're getting more and more of it. But you need to really think about where do you wanna see your business in 10 years, 20 years Because you can have those wins that can really drive your sales, but then there are many periods where things are just kind of stagnating. You're just kind of keeping afloat.
Marissa Tilley:And most people can see a business and see they might have had one item that really just blew up, and then you don't really hear from the brand for a little bit. And then a couple years later, there's another item. And it's just kind of thinking about the long term with the brand is really what's been important for us.
Dave Charest:So you mentioned going viral a couple of times, and so I wanna talk about that a little bit. Like, I guess, I think that's probably something like, oh, yeah. That'd be great, but it doesn't always happen. And so is that something you're attacking from a a conscious effort? Like, are you putting in a plan to try to make something that does that, or, like, how do you get to that stage where you it sounds like you've had multiple opportunities of that, and I guess this is a question for both of you.
Dave Charest:But, like, how do you get to that place where, yeah, something hits like that?
Marissa Tilley:I guess you gotta ride the wave when you have it, but you can never really predict, especially because you can be beholden to a quick algorithm change where all of a sudden your videos aren't getting seen so much, which is why I was saying that you really have to have the long term approach to your business because I think, just a lot of the way Yeah. Some social platforms are designed or for, like, short attention span. And you can have one dress go crazy, and you're just thinking about that one dress the whole time. But you really have to think about, like, how deep your brand goes and how like, all the dresses that you have that are selling.
Dave Charest:Yeah. So how do you think about then taking advantage of those moments?
Marissa Tilley:Oh, I think Chelsea can answer this, because she's behind all our social media.
Chelsea Demby:So when we take advantage of those moments, we actually like to promote those videos as paid ads, and we see a huge ROI on that. And why we love even doing that is it motivates us to create more fun content that's relatable. For example, right now it's homecoming season. So our target audience is homecoming teenage girls. So we create content specifically on TikTok and on Instagram.
Chelsea Demby:Something that's really fun and engaging so that they can see, oh, wow. This girl looks just like me. I feel confident enough that I wanna purchase that dress. And when we see it doing really well that's when we decide to do a paid ad. Every time we do our email blast, we include our social media platforms at the bottom, a way for our customers to also know that there's another way to stay informed about our new products.
Dave Charest:Gotcha. What is the experience at Lady Black Tie? How are we getting this stuff done?
Marissa Tilley:What's interesting is that let's just take one video. We'll make a video on InShot. We will post it on Instagram. We will post it on TikTok. We will post it on YouTube shorts.
Marissa Tilley:They will all perform very differently. And one thing you have to realize is your audience on each of those social platforms, even as a brand, are very different. We find that our TikTok, they're much younger. Instagram, they don't really engage as much and, like, write a bunch of comments, but they like to do that on TikTok. YouTube Shorts, still not really sure where that lands, but there is an active audience there.
Marissa Tilley:So kind of knowing where to tailor each video to or each bit of content, you should make something a little different for each of them. That's what we found. But, also, with the seasonality of business, it's super important to plan ahead. You know, when October comes around, we'll tend to do something with orange and black in our videos or anything, but also to ride other trends. As Chelsea was saying before, when the Barbie movie came out, she made an all pink email to kind of, like, just ride the trend because hot pink dresses
Dave Charest:We often talk about this idea, and we mentioned it earlier in the keynote too that, like, you
Dave Charest:know, We often talk about this idea, and
Dave Charest:we mentioned it earlier in
Dave Charest:the keynote too that, like, each of the social channels really has its own personality. And in order to be successful on them, you kinda have to cater to what's happening on those channels. Is there anything in particular that has maybe stood out to you as like a, oh, this really worked that maybe even surprised you?
Chelsea Demby:Yes. Actually, I've noticed on Instagram in comparison to TikTok, I've been seeing a lot more try on hauls on TikTok verse or on Instagram versus TikTok. I feel like TikTok, like Marissa was saying, it's definitely geared towards a more younger audience. So we wanna do more trending sounds or like a trending acting out a sound that's trending that appeals to their age group versus on Instagram. It's more so like how to style a certain dress or what would you wear, to this event.
Chelsea Demby:We do a lot of reels like that. Like if you're attending a wedding, we'll do basically a try on haul of wedding guest dresses.
Dave Charest:Marissa, what brought you to Constant Contact?
Marissa Tilley:One of those things that I would say is, progress over perfection. Not everything was perfect when I opened the business. The website wasn't even done yet. So what I did was I just put up something that said, sign up here if you want updates for when our website goes live. The business was open in November 2018, and I think our website actually launched in late December.
Marissa Tilley:So I started with Constant Contact from the start, and we just started collecting emails because I knew how powerful that would be over the long term.
Dave Charest:Is there a reason you chose Constant Contact?
Marissa Tilley:I love that they were a Boston based company. That was one thing that I really liked. And I looked at multiple platforms, and I like the way when I looked at businesses, I obviously signed up for a lot of emails myself from other businesses. I like the way that they looked aesthetically and just the design options. I like the drag and drop feature.
Marissa Tilley:They just made it so simple because when you start a business, it's pretty much you're very much an employee. So I had to learn how to do this myself, and I wanted something to be as easy as possible, drag and drop. I was not an expert. I had to figure it out myself, and I liked that it was a very intuitive platform. And I could just figure out, okay, this is where you add the price, this is where you add the link.
Marissa Tilley:It seemed easy. And when your mind is running 20 different things at once, you're ordering inventory 1 minute, you're helping customer the next, you're this, you're that. Something that's simple and anybody can figure out is always gonna help you.
Dave Charest:So, I guess, what would it be like trying to run your business if you didn't have Constant Contact?
Marissa Tilley:If you aren't collecting emails, you might find yourself in trouble in a few years because an algorithm change with paid ads, either on social or on a search engine, they can change immediately, and I've seen that. They're taking a bigger cut these days, so we're actually lowering the amount that that we're giving to them, and we're leaning into our email marketing. And I think if you weren't doing that and you weren't building your customer base by email, you could find yourself in a lot of trouble.
Dave Charest:Best piece of marketing advice you could offer the group here today?
Chelsea Demby:My best advice is to really not strive on perfection. Have fun with it, especially when you're focusing on social media and you really want to encourage your customers to, not only stay engaged through social media, but to also, you know, stay in the know through signing up for emails that, you know, you get from any kind of business. You wanna stay informed. So everyone wants to see different ways to stay informed. And social media and email marketing really go hand in hand and really utilize both platforms and, in a way, really just marry both of them together.
Dave Charest:Marissa, best piece of advice?
Marissa Tilley:I feel like I just gave it in in what I last said is you really do have to get to know your customers and get their information. At checkout, we get their email. If they come in our retail store, when they purchase on our website, obviously, we get their email for email receipts And grow your list however you can because I do think in the next few years, it's gonna be more important, and you do need a backup if paid ads are gonna continue the trend they're currently going on.
Dave Charest:Well, friend, let's recap some items from that discussion. Number 1, double down on what works. Marissa thought her brick and mortar store would be the main draw, and ecommerce would be supplemental. But what did she find? Well, the opposite to be true.
Dave Charest:And after paying more attention to ecommerce, she learned that she could start investing more in the things that were working by spending money on ads for search and social. Then she also started investing more in email marketing. So focus on what works. That opens the door for you to experiment with other things later. Number 2, grow a list that you own.
Dave Charest:As the online space continues to evolve, advertising becomes less impactful. Now as Marissa mentioned, you need to use your existing customer list in order to grow. When Lady Black Tie summer sale wasn't performing as well in advertising, they shifted focus to email and started to watch the orders come in. Don't underestimate the power of your existing email list. Number 3, follow what's trending on social media for an added boost.
Dave Charest:Now let me be clear. I don't mean chase trends. I mean, how can you piggyback on a trend that makes sense for your business? Lady black tie was able to capitalize on the Barbie movie with pink dresses. Well, that made complete sense for the business.
Dave Charest:When you can integrate trends naturally, you stand a better chance of your actions having a positive impact. But remember, stay true to your brand in the process. Otherwise, your plan could end up backfiring. Now here's your action item for today. Take a look at Constant Contact's simplified dashboard for running Facebook and Instagram ads.
Dave Charest:This is a great way to get your feet wet with paid advertising without complicated dashboards. I'll include a link to more details in the show notes. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. If you have questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me directly at dave.charest (at) constantcontact.com.
Dave Charest:If you did enjoy today's episode, please take a moment to leave us a review. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.