Juggling a business is hard enough without adding the pressure of mastering multiple marketing channels. It's easy to feel overwhelmed, spreading yourself thin across social media, email, and who-knows-what-else.
But what if there was a way to streamline your efforts and make your marketing work smarter, not harder?
That's where multichannel marketing comes in. "When you use them together, you get a sum that's greater than the parts," says Aaron Wesley Means, Founder and CEO of Activate Business Solutions, emphasizing the power of combining channels like email and social media.
In this episode of Constant Contact's Be a Marketer podcast, host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, welcomes back Constant Contact Community Coach Aaron.
Aaron shares his expert insights on creating cohesive, impactful campaigns that extend your reach and boost your business growth.
Tune in to learn how to leverage the unique strengths of each digital platform, discover how Constant Contact's Campaign Builder can streamline your multichannel strategy, and walk away with actionable advice to amplify your marketing impact.
Meet Today's Guest: Aaron Wesley Means of Activate Business Solutions
π» What he does: Aaron is the founder and CEO of Activate Business Solutions, a full-service micro-agency based in Asheville, North Carolina. A Constant Contact partner since 2011 and community coach, Aaron is passionate about empowering small businesses and nonprofits through education and hands-on marketing support.
π‘ Key quote: "I've seen folks that are 'not techies' doing full campaigns with the Campaign Builder in five or 10 minutes."
If you love this show, please leave a review. Go to RateThisPodcast.com/bam and follow the simple instructions.
Chapters
Juggling a business is hard enough without adding the pressure of mastering multiple marketing channels. It's easy to feel overwhelmed, spreading yourself thin across social media, email, and who-knows-what-else.
But what if there was a way to streamline your efforts and make your marketing work smarter, not harder?
That's where multichannel marketing comes in. "When you use them together, you get a sum that's greater than the parts," says Aaron Wesley Means, Founder and CEO of Activate Business Solutions, emphasizing the power of combining channels like email and social media.
In this episode of Constant Contact's Be a Marketer podcast, host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, welcomes back Constant Contact Community Coach Aaron.
Aaron shares his expert insights on creating cohesive, impactful campaigns that extend your reach and boost your business growth.
Tune in to learn how to leverage the unique strengths of each digital platform, discover how Constant Contact's Campaign Builder can streamline your multichannel strategy, and walk away with actionable advice to amplify your marketing impact.
Meet Today's Guest: Aaron Wesley Means of Activate Business Solutions
π» What he does: Aaron is the founder and CEO of Activate Business Solutions, a full-service micro-agency based in Asheville, North Carolina. A Constant Contact partner since 2011 and community coach, Aaron is passionate about empowering small businesses and nonprofits through education and hands-on marketing support.
π‘ Key quote: "I've seen folks that are 'not techies' doing full campaigns with the Campaign Builder in five or 10 minutes."
If you love this show, please leave a review. Go to RateThisPodcast.com/bam and follow the simple instructions.
What is Be a Marketer with Dave Charest?
As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business goβbut you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the Be a Marketer podcast! New episodes every Thursday!
Dave Charest:
On today's episode, you'll hear how to do more with your marketing in less time. This is the be a marketer podcast.
Dave Charest:
My name is Dave Charest, director of small business success at Constant Contact. And I help small business owners like you make sense of online marketing. And on this podcast, we'll explore what it really takes to market your business even if marketing's not your thing. No jargon, no hype, just real stories to inspire you, and practical advice you can act on. So remember, friend, you can be a marketer.
Dave Charest:
And at Constant Contact, we're here to help. Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining us for another episode of the Be A Marketer podcast. This is Kelsey Carter. I fooled you, didn't I, Kelsi You thought I was gonna say something else.
Kelsi Carter:
You did. I was not expecting that intro so quick.
Dave Charest:
So, Kelsi, this is the 4th in our series of conversations with say it with me. Constant contact community.
Kelsi Carter:
Community coaches.
Dave Charest:
Nope. That didn't work. We'll try better next time. Anyway, community coaches are distinguished members and leaders in the constant contact community who go above and beyond. They showcase their expertise, engage with others, and offer guidance to the small businesses in our online community.
Dave Charest:
Kelsi, we're doing 6 of these episodes. We've done 3 of them so far. We've had Tracy Lee Davis come on to talk to us about setting goals. Aaron Wesley Means has been here to talk about email design. Melanie Diehl talking about growing your list.
Dave Charest:
We're gonna talk about creating multichannel campaigns today. And then we've got reporting coming up and segmentation to kind of top things off. Kelsey, we have a return guest today to talk about creating those multichannel campaigns. Don't we?
Kelsi Carter:
We sure do. It's Erin Wesley Means, the founder and CEO of Activate Business Solutions, which is a full service microagency based in the Asheville region of North Carolina. So he started this agency because he wanted to help small businesses, nonprofits after seeing this great need for marketing services within those spaces.
Dave Charest:
Love that. And why don't we jump right into our discussion with Aaron about the importance of multichannel campaigns? So, Aaron, multichannel campaigns, I think people get very tied into the things that they're doing. So if they're sending emails, this is what I do. I send emails, which I'm glad people are doing.
Dave Charest:
I think that's a good thing to do. But when you start thinking about social media, you've got text marketing, you've got all this other stuff. Talk to me about, like, what are multichannel campaigns, and why are they important?
Aaron Wesley Means:
Well, the average small business or nonprofit that I talk to is frustrated by the idea of needing to cover many bases within their marketing. They're short on time. They have trouble keeping up with it all, and they feel stressed about it. And then they have this, you know, then that's not even what is the content gonna be. Right?
Aaron Wesley Means:
Yes. That's so it can be kinda daunting, but at the same time, the goal really is we need visibility. We need visibility and penetration with our marketing message to really build that rapport, create that connection. And so in 2024, you really need to be making a concerted effort using a few different strategies that are in each of their own right quite powerful, and they have their sweet spot. But when you use them together, you get a sum that's greater than the parts.
Dave Charest:
To your point, yeah. It's like using these different channels really allow you to kind of expand your reach, help you kind of boost that opportunity for growth that you have by getting more people into your universe, so to speak. But I think one of the mistakes I often see is when people think that, well, okay, multichannel, that just means copying and pasting the same thing across, like, different sites or channels or whatever the case may be. Talk to me. Talk me off a ledge.
Dave Charest:
Why is this a mistake?
Aaron Wesley Means:
Well, first of all, the level of noise on the Internet is, like, a 100 times what it was 10 years ago. So I even have discussions with clients when they're asking, should I be posting the same content to each of my social channels? And I gotta tell you, it's more often than not that even if they do do that, it's still not gonna get seen by people multiple places. That's how wild and, how crazy it is out there. At the same time, technology's improved.
Aaron Wesley Means:
There are best practices that have come, you know, into play over the years that it make it easier for us to maybe share similar content, but spin it and frame it a little bit differently based on the platform. And so a a social post might look a little different than an email, would definitely be different than a text message marketing.
Dave Charest:
Yeah. I think this is really important for people to hear because I think, again, I think sometimes it's about thinking about, okay, what is your goal with your particular campaign that you may be running? And I'll use campaign as kind of all of the different channels you might use. And really kinda carrying that theme through, but to your point, leaning into the strengths of the particular channel that you're using. You know, I'll give you an example.
Dave Charest:
I, you know, I can remember when, you know, Constant Contact was bringing SMS to market, right, in terms of a feature that you could then use within Constant Contact. And so we we're talking about, you know, getting people thinking about and finding out people's interest in text marketing, and I'm thinking of you know, on LinkedIn, for example, that's the channel that I kind of focus on a lot in terms of what I do from a a social perspective, So we used a poll on LinkedIn, and I asked people, like, hey. Have you considered this? Would you use it? You know?
Dave Charest:
And so got people thinking about SMS. Right? Using a poll feature on a channel that gets some pretty good traction in terms of that, so leaning into what that was. And then we have, Constant Contact newsletter, our hints and tips newsletter, which was then able to take that idea and that content of talking about SMS, go deeper with individual articles about different aspects of SMS, but then also have a call out to a webinar on SMS. Right?
Dave Charest:
And so, again, using the ability of the newsletter to give more information, allow people more things to kinda go deeper into something. Right? So getting them thinking about it, allowing them to explore it more. And then SMS channel, I would send people a reminder to say, like, hey. The event is today, and I would use that to increase attendance for that SMS webinar.
Dave Charest:
Right? And so it's really thinking about, like, yeah. We're talking about SMS. We wanna get people aware of that, but then leaning into each of those strengths. Right?
Dave Charest:
And so, I mean, is that how you think of it too, like, when you start thinking about, like, how do we kind of, like, approach just thinking multichannel?
Aaron Wesley Means:
That's how I think about it because, you know, it's about the strengths of each channel, but then it's also about what what's the objective. I can't tell you how many hundreds of people have said to me, I can't seem to get any sales off social media. Mhmm. And my answer is similar to most of them, which is you're not supposed to. Yeah.
Aaron Wesley Means:
You're supposed to have fun, whatever that looks like. It can mean anything. The goal is engagement
Dave Charest:
Yeah.
Aaron Wesley Means:
Building an ongoing trend of people leaning back into your post and your content because they enjoy it. And then the real sweet spot is this is filling the top of the funnel. You know? If you know what a sales funnel is, if you're listening, you know, there's different stages that someone goes through from not knowing you exist to making a sale or a donation to your nonprofit. And the top of the funnel is all about the awareness factor.
Aaron Wesley Means:
Social media is even though it's extremely challenging at times, it is really one of the best no financial commitment ways to continue to build that awareness and that top of the funnel. And so, you know, videos, short posts with images, teasers, running an event even within social to lead them to sign up for something. These are all different ways that you can play that game. And when you do that properly, you're connecting with the networks of the people who you're following, and that's really the way it's supposed to work. And you can't do that with these other platforms.
Aaron Wesley Means:
And meanwhile, they have their complete sweet spots. You know, email is the direct connect. As far as statistically, it dominates everything out there, highest deliverability rate, highest visibility rate. And If you can get them to click and open and engage that email, you're building that rapport. And to your point, Dave, you can put so much more information in that, and it actually feels right.
Aaron Wesley Means:
A social post trying to feed you all six courses of the meal and dessert before you keep scrolling, it actually usually has the adverse effect. But an email that starts to tell the story of what this campaign is about gives them a little more information and maybe that call to action. It feels good. It's personal. It's visible.
Aaron Wesley Means:
And then text is just like you said. It's tactical. It's that inside circle VIP. Hey. We're letting you know about something.
Aaron Wesley Means:
It's meant to be short. It's meant to be surgical, and it's meant to really make them feel like, hey. I I I've got some value from being on the inside circle of this. So the style of the content presentation and then also using each of these to accomplish the goal, and the goal isn't the same for each of these in all in most cases. So, you know, that's one way to look at it.
Dave Charest:
Yeah. You know, one of the things I find frustrating, and I know business owners out there probably feel the same, and I think there's a difference between there's the folks, there's the businesses that are kinda built online, and so their job is to be online all day. But then there are other businesses that are businesses that do other things that aren't online. Right? And so
Aaron Wesley Means:
Right.
Dave Charest:
And so you have to figure out how do you use those digital tools, right, in a way to help you, but know they're a place that you're not gonna be all day long. Right? And so I think one of the challenges is kind of the the dictates of social and these other channels that you've gotta figure out. Okay. Like, alright.
Dave Charest:
I've gotta figure out a time how to create the thing for this, how to create the thing for that, which leads me to which I'm excited about, and I hope more people start to take a look at it, but I I wanna have your point of view on this. But when we start thinking about the campaign builder within Constant Contact, we talked about this idea of having a goal. What is that we're trying to accomplish? Right? What do we want to do?
Dave Charest:
And then entering in that information and giving some ideas of, like, the things that you're trying to do. And then what would typically take you time to plan and figure out, Constant Contact will spit back in in minutes, a plan across multiple channels on that thing. And so you've got your social post. Maybe you need an event, right, and have people in. You've got the emails that you should send in in conjunction with that to support that.
Dave Charest:
Talk to me about your experience playing around with Campaign Builder.
Aaron Wesley Means:
Campaign builder is the coolest thing that I have seen since I started in digital marketing. It is the coolest thing I've seen because my clients have questions that it's conditional logic. They solve 1 the answer to one question and they have new questions they need answered before they can move into action. And it does very much resonate with what you said, Dave. They need to first learn email marketing.
Aaron Wesley Means:
They need to learn the platform. They need to learn a cohesive strategy for what content to send, and then social media, and then how many channels should they have, and then they need to have a schedule for it, they need to keep on top of it, and text marketing can feel a little overwhelming and that's new. And how do we get them to opt in for that? And, you know, helping folks to just get a handle on that has been an incredible challenge because you're asking folks who are specialists in other things to go completely against the grain and commit quite a lot of time and energy to developing marketing on these different channels. And so it's an uphill battle for sure.
Aaron Wesley Means:
And campaign builder is mind blowing because by answering the questions of what your goal is, what's the timeline of the campaign, what you know, describe it, give us some explanation of what you did as you wanna be marketing here, it will, like you said, unpack a whole calendar of content pieces, elements from an announcement to it's on to reminder to last call, emails, social posts. You know, people don't know that Constant Contact's dashboard has a full blown social media manager right there. So being able to create social posts with AI woven right in, that content generator and the AI content generator is right there in the email builder, right there in the social builder, in the text builder. And so having a platform that you can build and schedule social posts from is amazing. The campaign builder reaches into each of these components within constant contact, lights them all up, and puts all of them on deck for you.
Aaron Wesley Means:
So, you know, I I've already done maybe 6 webinars about this since April because I can't explain how many it's like how many times around the track we are giving people an edge here before they ever even step foot. Somebody can know very little about marketing, have very little time, be able to go into the Constant Contact, set up their brand kit, which informs all the different pieces, create multichannel campaign, answer a few questions, have it draft and map out multiple campaign components over the course of a calendar that you can then edit, change, update, tweak, make your own, and set up, and then make it active. And so I've now seen folks that are, quote, unquote, not techies doing full campaigns with the campaign builder in 5 or 10 minutes. And, you know, just going in and cleaning up the details, changing out images, deciding they wanna put their logo or their catch line in a certain way here and there. And within an hour, they've got an entire promotional campaign laid out, all the content done, AI has mapped out, and set the table for them to come in and finish the meal.
Aaron Wesley Means:
It's completely mind blowing.
Dave Charest:
I love to the fact that, you know, I think in a perfect world, right, we could send one social post, we could send one email, and everybody would do the thing. Right? The the unfortunate part is that not everyone
Aaron Wesley Means:
There was a time Dave, I think that was 2,008.
Dave Charest:
Oh, was that the time? Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron Wesley Means:
That existed for maybe a year.
Dave Charest:
But it's like right? Like, not everyone is thinking about our businesses as much as we are. Right? And so people have lives. People have things going on.
Dave Charest:
All these distractions. And so I think, you know, I love that it does give you the multiple opportunities, right, to get in front of people and do that. I wanna recap here a bit. Right? So multichannel marketing, it really allows you to expand your reach, right, to help you grow your business because you're bringing more people into the fold, as we mentioned.
Dave Charest:
You really do need to lean into the strengths of each of those channels that you are going to use, though. It's not as simple as a cut and paste, right, because each has its own little quirks and things that perform better on those channels, and so it's really about carrying a theme across each of those channels that you're using. And, really, again, you can save time and really get to a nice output for yourself when you try to, you know, constant contact campaign builder to really get that multichannel campaign and marketing campaign aligned with the goals that you're trying to reach. Aaron, this was a great conversation. Thanks again, and appreciate your insights here.
Aaron Wesley Means:
It's my pleasure, Dave. Nice to be back with you.
Dave Charest:
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. Please take a moment to leave us a review. Just go to rate this podcast dot com slash bam. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. That's rate this podcast.com/bam.
Dave Charest:
Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.