Stop Ignoring Customers: The ROI of Response | Ep. 62 w/ Brooke Sellas (B Squared Media)

Your customers are telling you what they want, but most leaders ignore them…then wonder why growth stalls.

In this episode, Brooke Sellas (B Squared Media) joins me for a reality-first breakdown of what customer-led growth actually looks like right now: how to listen for signals, turn them into smarter strategy, and stop burning budget trying to out-market the truth.

We dig into:

• Why “marketing” fails when leadership isn’t listening
• Where the real customer data lives (and why most teams miss it)
• How to translate customer language into messaging that converts
• The leadership discipline that builds trust and revenue

Featuring: Brooke B. Sellas
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brookebsellas/
Website: https://bsquared.media/

Ready to lead through change without burning out? Book a 20-min Transition Leadership Foundation Call: https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/foundation-call-20min

Creators and Guests

Host

Adam W. Barney

Adam W. Barney helps transitioning leaders navigate career and leadership inflection points with clarity and momentum. Author of Make Your Own Glass Half Full and creator of EnergyOS. Based in Boston, fueled by family and music.

What is Is Anything Real??

Is Anything Real? is the Reality-First Leadership podcast for builder-leaders who want outcomes, not optics. Each week, Adam W. Barney sits down with founders and operators to unpack positioning, marketing, community, energy management, and influence - plus the numbers behind what actually worked.

You’ll hear: a quick Reality Check, a practical Proof Stack (inputs → actions → outcomes), and one EnergyOS habit you can run this week. Specifics over slogans; humane systems over hustle cosplay.

New episodes every Wednesday at 12:00 PM ET.

👉 Book your 20-min Exploration Call: https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/explorationplugin-20min

[00:06.1]
What if the future of paid advertising isn't about content at all, but about conversation? Today's guest is calling out a blind spot most brands don't even realize they have. She's the CEO of B Squared Media, where social media customer care isn't a nice-to-have.

[00:24.0]
It's the new marketing engine. This is Brooke Sellas, and she's about to flip our thinking on what really moves the needle after the click. Welcome back to "Is Anything Real?", the show where we separate what's real from what's algorithmic noise, and marketing, and growth.

[00:40.8]
I'm Adam W. Barney, energy coach, author of Make Your Own Glass Half Full, and someone who spent over $100 million on ads trying to figure out what actually works. Brook Selles joins me today again from B Squared Media, a social media customer care agency that believes the conversation is the campaign.

[01:00.8]
She's here to talk about why the future belongs to brands that listen, not just launch. Welcome, Brooke. Hey, thanks so much for having me. You got it. Brooke, you told me a story that stopped me cold. It was about a brand dropping half a million dollars on a Black Friday campaign with zero plan to handle ad comments.

[01:22.9]
How common is that oversight? Unfortunately, it's very common. We see this a lot that, you know, the clients that we work with are typically running paid media because, you know, it works. But, they're not dealing with the comments that are coming through on that paid media are on those paid media campaigns.

[01:44.1]
And to me, that's wild. And I think that's probably why it stopped you in your tracks, because you're literally spending half a million dollars to sell people stuff. And inevitably, they have questions as they go down that path to purchase, and then we're just letting them hang there and not answering them.

[02:01.6]
Like, should some of that spend include engaging those people who are showing interest and maybe even intent or trying to buy?

[02:12.4]
I mean, it's unfortunate that companies still treat the conversation around ads as an afterthought, when literally that's when the buying intent shows up. When you step in to fix that gap, what does great customer care actually look like in real time?

[02:30.7]
Right. Exactly. I mean, it's not that hard. I mean, the obvious thing is you create this ad, you could spend $10 on it, you could spend half a million dollars on it. I don't care what it is. But your ultimate goal of that ad, for the most part, at least most of the enterprise or larger clients that we work with is sales.

[02:50.2]
Right? They're looking for revenue. So because they're looking for revenue, and they're selling this product, or this widget, or this service, and people see that ad, they come through and they say, do you ship to Canada? Do you have this in my size? Do you have it in red?

[03:06.4]
What about if I have multiple cats? We have a kitty litter brand. Right. Like does it work for multiple cat households? Like these are the questions that we literally see on ads that we run or help some of our clients run. If you're not answering that question.

[03:22.0]
Well, you tell me, Adam, if you're asking that sales support question on that ad and we totally ghost you, are you buying from us? No. No. And mentally, I would just walk away from that company and probably never come back. No matter how that re-engagement strategy works.

[03:38.6]
Right? Because every comment, I see it as a conversation waiting to happen, if you actually respond. It doesn't just happen in a silo and then disappear. Exactly. And I think where the real misses for companies is like, obviously we've been doing social for a long time.

[03:55.5]
It's not new anymore. But I still think the miss is that we think content or the campaign is the currency. That has changed. That is not the case any longer because conversations are now the currency. When we do answer these sales support questions, whether it's on an ad or on a post or a random, you know, somebody in the wild saying, like, hey, what's the best printer for xyz?

[04:18.7]
If you come through and you answer those sales support, those interest and intent type questions, guess what? You end up a lot of times, especially for products that you can, you know, that are maybe lower dollar, you can close that customer right there on that channel.

[04:35.1]
Right, right. So it's. You're leaving revenue on the table if you're not doing this with your advertising. Well, I love that view of what that looks like, basically, for brands today. Right. And I love that spicy take. You know that you've mentioned where we've moved into an experience economy where conversations beat just the content.

[04:54.1]
Let's say, you know, if you had to reallocate a typical ad budget, how much would you divert from that awareness bucket into a response bucket? That's such a great question. So we often ask for as little as 10% of the ad budget just to make sure that we're covering the conversations that are happening there.

[05:14.9]
Sometimes it could be higher, like 20%. It depends on the client, and the budget, and what's happening. But, I mean, we're talking pennies on the dollar, especially when we're getting into some of these larger spends that our clients have during. Especially, we're coming up on the holidays.

[05:30.9]
Like, now's the time where we're like literally throwing all of our Black Friday, Cyber Monday, all of that kind of stuff, holiday deals, and, you know, so if you just think taking 10% of that budget and putting it towards making sure that every person that comes through on that ad and asks a question gets a response, a quick response, number one, a valuable response, number two.

[05:57.4]
But also, we look for those intent signals, because I always say interest doesn't equal intent. But if you're saying something like, does this kitty litter work in a multiple-cat household? To me, that is an intent signal. You have the intent to buy. But wait a minute.

[06:14.0]
I just have to make sure, because I have three cats, not one. Is this going to work for me? If we can answer that question promptly with empathy and understanding and with, hey, yeah, Adam, it does. It actually works for households up to five cats.

[06:29.1]
You know, I don't know, making that up, but you know what I mean. Then you're like, oh, wow, okay, great. Or, you know, hey, Adam, yes, it does. Here's some of our testimonials from multiple cat households, right? Just giving you that value and that social proof. Then you're like, oh, yeah, I'm ready to buy.

[06:45.0]
We're like, great. Hey, guess what? Because we're having this conversation and you've been so great, DM me. I've got a little extra something something for you. And then we can send you free shipping, or $10 off, or buy one, get one, whatever it is. Now, if you use that little promo code that we've given you inside of the DM, and guess what?

[07:04.2]
We're now attributing those dollars, that revenue, to social media and social care directly, which now gets the C-suite's attention. They're like, oh, yeah, wait a minute, now we can make money on social, right? And connects things back, Brooke, to the metrics of the experience economy, right?

[07:26.0]
Not looking at things like click-through rate and CPC, and getting into what leaders should be watching instead. And understanding also that content is what gets you seen, but the conversation is what gets you remembered and drives that revenue for the business. Yeah, 100%, I think.

[07:44.7]
You know, we used to think of content as the whole game for social. And it's still so important. I'm not saying it's unimportant, but like, think about where we are right now with the zero0click content. If you're still optimizing for clicks, you are optimizing for yesterday because less than half of all Google searches end in an actual click.

[08:06.1]
Less than half? Like, I think it's like 41% or something. So almost 60% of those Google searches aren't ending in a click. So what are people doing? Well, they're searching conversationally, they're using social media conversationally to ask for recommendations or to go directly to the brand and say, hey, is this product going to work for my specific situation?

[08:26.9]
Right. So if you're not engaging in those conversations, you're still worried about the clicks. I don't know what to tell you. You're in trouble. Well, and we both know that paid social was supposed to make advertising accessible for everyone. You've said that dream is dead.

[08:44.5]
You know, what's changed there? I do think that this is a real sore spot for me. I used to love ads, but because in the beginning, when you think about ads, right, I'm 100 years old, I've been in social forever, I'm a dinosaur. But when you think about when ads first came out on Facebook, this was like 2007, I believe I'm totally aging myself.

[09:03.2]
But, they were literally trying to make it so that the messaging was, Adam, you could be a solopreneur. You could be one person. And we're gonna make this so easy for you because that you can run your own ads for your own company, right?

[09:20.8]
And they set it up that way and they tried to make it user-friendly. They had courses, they had classes, they had their own ads telling people like, you can do this, right? Think about how ads work today with Meta or Google, any of them. I mean, things have gotten so complicated and so convoluted that really the solopreneurs or the small businesses can't even run their own ads even through a site like Meta, who still claims that that's what they want you to do, but there's no way, they've made it so difficult.

[09:53.8]
In that vein, Brooke, the Meta and the other platforms have made ads so complex. I would argue that even agencies struggle, not even just solopreneurs or founders. And that makes it makes it very difficult for a brand's ability to connect with real people also.

[10:11.4]
It does, Yeah. I can't tell you how many people have come forward, and told us, like, this horrible ad experience they had on their own or with someone else. And I say, look, I hear what you're saying but I think we still live in the days of 2007 when it was easy, and anyone could do it, and you can set up your own account and run ads.

[10:30.9]
By the end of the day, you know, that doesn't exist anymore. You know, 20x on your ad spend doesn't exist anymore. We had a client where we were getting 12x return on ad spend for them. And, you know, things change as they do, and we were only able to get them like, I think 8 or 9x, you know, and they were like, well, we want 12x.

[10:52.0]
And we were like, well, if we could get you 12, we would. Right, but you're still getting, eight or nine dollars for every dollar you're spending. That is a huge win. They left us. They left us because they were gonna, they were chasing. They wanted more than 12x, really.

[11:07.0]
And that is the problem right there. You've got the, you know, the people saying they can't do it. And then when they hire an agency to do it, their expectations are completely unrealistic. Wow. Wow. And I know there with B Squared Media, you turned customer care into a growth strategy.

[11:26.6]
What flipped the switch for you? The conversations. You know, as we've been doing social media management and paid advertising for customers, we're 13 and a half now, so for 13 and a half years. And, you know, I was looking at it before then because obviously we're talking about the 2007 days, which was way before we started the business in 2012.

[11:47.6]
But, for the 13 and a half years, we've really just been doing this for customers and clients. We started to hear, even from the clients, like, something's missing. We love that you're engaging with the community and the conversations, but, like, how can we blow that up? Right?

[12:07.1]
Because if you think about it, if somebody comes to your Facebook page, Adam, and leaves you a comment, or DMs you, or asks a social selling support question on one of your ads, that's still reactive. Right? We're still waiting for people to come to us. And so we started saying, yeah, I see what you're saying. It is reactive.

[12:25.6]
How can we get proactive? Okay. This is much bigger than just an engagement spend specialist or an engagement strategy. This is like going into the retention and the social selling, you know, gaining and retaining customers through social media, which meant that we had to start using tools and strategies that looked beyond just the reactive. Right.

[12:47.3]
Coming to us conversations, and went and found those conversations in the wild where Adam is saying, like, hey, y', all, I'm looking for a printer that's compatible with Alexa, taking recommendations. Right. If I'm a printer company and I see that in the wild, I still have a chance to join that conversation and say, just like those other scenarios we gave.

[13:08.0]
Hey, Adam, I see you're interested in this kind of printer. Here's a video on how ours works. Let us know what you think. Nine times out of 10, Adam's not coming back. But if Adam watches that and is like, oh my God, this is exactly what I was looking for. Now we've got intent. Let's sell Adam, right now.

[13:23.9]
Great. DM us. We've got a special for you. We're gonna send you a free ink pack if you buy. You know what I mean? Like, it's a little bit harder. Obviously, the conversion rate's a little bit lower on going out and finding those conversations in the wild, but it works because so few brands are doing it.

[13:40.9]
Everybody's doing content, everybody's doing ads. Hardly anyone is looking for and joining these conversations to be helpful and hopefully sell. Yeah, I mean, I know it's also a heavy lift, right, to teach brands how to treat social listening as a sales channel instead of just a support queue.

[14:00.9]
How do you train the teams that you work with to show up with empathy, speed, and the right energy when handling, say, hundreds or thousands of comments a day? Thousands. We have one client, it's an electronics consumer good, and they do a Facebook Live once a month. And literally in the span of an hour, we have thousands of comments that we're filtering through as a team.

[14:23.3]
So, yeah, we deal with a lot of conversations. I think the biggest turning point for us was when we created our care method, which is how we train our team. But also anybody who wants us to come in and train their team, like they wanna keep it in house, we do what we call the care method, and that's C, A, R, E.

[14:42.9]
It's conversations, right? Looking at both the reactive and the proactive conversations that are happening around your brand, your industry, your competitors, which is a really cool part of social listening. Then, we look at those conversations for the A and the R, and we're looking for Acquisition conversations, those sales support questions, like, does this work in a multiple cat household? Right.

[15:05.3]
That's an intent sales question. And we're also looking for R, retention or retaining customers. Where does that churn happen? Where's that potential friction happening? Adam comes along and he's like, man, I ordered your kitty litter and it doesn't work for multiple cat households. Right.

[15:22.2]
So now I'm saying, all right, we've got this potential churn moment with Adam. We've got this conversation happening. How can we keep him in the fold? Right. We want to retain this customer, so we work on those things. And then E is just engagement. And what I mean by just engagement is meaningful engagement.

[15:39.1]
It goes back to creating content on social. Now we've gotten to content and we're using all of the conversations that we've had. We're using all of these pain points and FAQs, frequently asked questions, that we're seeing. Now we're creating content that answers these customers questions which helps them stay tighter and more loyal to us because we're just giving them what they're asking for instead of just creating content to sell stuff.

[16:05.8]
Right, right. I mean, the other line I want to make sure we have time to just touch on a little bit, Brooke, is how AI is entering the space fast. And I don't know if I see, AI is augmenting, not necessarily replacing human customer care.

[16:23.1]
But could AI finally help brands connect sales and service data in a way that feels seamless and human, or is it not going to move in that direction? Yes, I think AI is going to be huge for customer experience. I am not in the camp of replacing humans with AI for customer care or customer experience.

[16:42.1]
That's not my bag. And by the way, all the stories you see out there of big brand fails are when they tried to replace their whole customer experience team with AI. So don't do it. Like all of the warning signs are out there. I don't know why people are still trying to do that.

[16:58.4]
But when you talk about extracting the signal through the noise, because when we're talking about thousands and thousands of conversations on the daily, that's like information coming at you through a fire hose. So the really great way we use AI through automation and keyword spotting, trend and pattern recognition, is helping us filter through those thousands of conversations really easily and putting them into buckets. Right.

[17:23.7]
So maybe it's a sentiment bucket. These are all negative conversations. We might want to deal with these right away. These are neutral, these are positive. We want to deal with positive next because that's brand love or user generated content, et cetera. Right. It can also help you pinpoint intent signals.

[17:39.8]
So we use AI to say, if somebody says, like, how much or can you ship to? Right. Those keyword phrases, AI now recognizes that as an intent signal and says, bring this one to the top. You got to answer Adam right now because he's ready to buy.

[17:57.5]
How can we get him to buy right now on the channel of choice? So, it is very nuanced, but I think keeping the human at the front and center of the conversation. We are the humans having the conversations with other humans behind, you know, the brand, behind the logo.

[18:13.7]
But the AI is doing all of the heavy lifting of what that entails on the back end. Right, right. What would you say, even with that categorization process that AI is helping with, what's a red flag comment you see brands continually mishandle In your experience?

[18:33.5]
Is there something that comes to mind there? So many. I'm trying to choose just one. I think the caveat with AI, I'll give you an example. If somebody says, man, I love it when I fly, this isn't just an example.

[18:50.5]
Southwest Airlines, I fly you. I love you. This is not really real, but okay. Man, I love it when I fly Southwest for 12 hours, and they lose my luggage. AI will actually look at that sentence and it'll see that word love, and it'll score that as a positive conversation.

[19:09.7]
It'll give it positive sentiment because it doesn't quite understand nuance. Right. When we say things like, man, I love it when an airline loses my luggage. It's like, yay, you love it. No, I was being sarcastic. Right. So I think that's the biggest miss. If you just let AI do the doing, and do all the heavy lifting with no, we call them discount double checks.

[19:29.8]
Like no check-ins, no quality assurance on what the AI is doing. You would totally miss that. And Adam is probably not going to get a response from you because a lot of companies want to focus on the negative, or the sales first, which makes sense. But Adam's probably not going to get a response.

[19:45.6]
And really, that was a friction point. Now we have the ugly task of perhaps having Adam churn and losing Adam because we didn't address his pain point. Right, right, right. In that sense, though, Brooke, you know, what's next for B Squared as the conversation economy matures?

[20:05.3]
What's in your foresight here? Gosh, so many other exciting things. It's hard to pick what's just one. I think for us, it's still the foundational knowledge of what is social media customer care? Why is it important?

[20:22.1]
Why do we need to stop looking at content as the currency on social and start thinking about conversations? So for us, it's still very much like an educational foundational. Here's the baseline. Here's how social has changed. This is why content isn't working for you anymore.

[20:39.6]
Right? I think unfortunately, on top of all the cool things we want to do, the biggest message is there are still too many brands that are not using social listening and not using social care as a strategy for social media.

[20:57.6]
I love it. Awesome. You know, Brooke, this was incredible. And I think it's a wake-up call for every marketer still treating comments like background noise. Before we wrap, where can listeners find you and learn more about your work there at B Squared Media? Absolutely.

[21:12.7]
You can find me on LinkedIn. That's where I hang out. Brooke Sellas. Or you can go to bsquared.media, that's our website and you can find out all the cool things that we do around social care. We've even got like a free course quiz on the website that you can go take and find out where you're missing the boat on social media.

[21:31.2]
Awesome. Awesome. That'll all be linked below in the description, so I look forward for people to check that out. Connect with Brooke. And, I'd love to leave everyone here today with just saying the future of marketing isn't louder ads, it's better listening.

[21:47.6]
Brands that win won't just create content, they'll create connection at scale. I love it. All right, well, thank you, Brooke, and thanks for listening to "Is Anything Real?", where we cut through the noise and find what's actually working in marketing, leadership, and growth.

[22:05.3]
If this episode sparks something for you, share it, leave a review, and plug in next week as we keep exploring what's real. Until then, stay energized, stay curious, and keep your conversations real.