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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, 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 2x Webby Award Honoree Be A Marketer podcast!
Dave Charest: Today on episode 14 of the Be a Marketer podcast, you'll hear from a top marketer who has her finger on the pulse of her customers needs. Get ready to discover the secrets to her success and how to apply them to your own marketing efforts. Plus, I'll be sharing why constructive criticism is essential for growth and improvement in marketing. This is the Be a Marketer podcast. 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. Hello. Hello, friend, and welcome to another edition of the Be a Marketer podcast. As always, grateful to have you here. Happy for your attention. You know, when I first started at constant contact, there was a phrase that was used a lot internally, and that phrase was, feedback is a gift. Now, this phrase actually really resonated with me then. It really still resonates with me a lot here today because frankly, the feedback that you get or don't get really, it really helps you make adjustments to what it is that you're doing so you can get a deeper resonance with the audience that you're trying to reach. This is why I think it's really so important for you to talk to your customers. My colleagues often hear me saying things like, the worst thing you can do is lock a bunch of marketers in a room and try to figure out the problems of the people that you're trying to reach. What you want to do is actually you want to talk to those people directly and you want to listen to what they're saying and how they're saying it, because obviously this is going to be important for understanding your products and services, but it's also important to the success of the content that you create to really fuel the marketing efforts that you do. Now, let me give you an example here. So many years ago, I befriended one of our customers, and he was struggling a bit with all the time that it really took for him and his staff to do his social media and do his email marketing. And so what we did was we invited him to come in for a half day workshop. And in the course of doing this, we really wanted to understand what they were trying to do, where they were struggling, and essentially just help them put together a plan that would work better for them. So I put together this agenda and I was, you know, I was all proud of myself and I emailed it out and then I got an email back and, you know, my contact didn't want to talk about any of the stuff that I had in there, but he did have a list that he wanted to talk about. And, you know, I learned a big lesson there now, you know, I could have gotten offended and bristled at the changes that he wanted to make, but instead, I really looked at a little bit more closely and really tried to look at what was important to him. And I realized that the things that I thought were important to talk about were actually still going to get covered. We just needed to get there in a different way. And when you think about what it means to grab attention with your marketing efforts, you really need to get out of your own way and focus on the things that your audience is interested in. If you can start there, then you can actually get them to where you need them to be. So after our little workshop, we came up with a marketing plan that both of the teams were really happy with. And it was then really great to just see the results that they started to get after they implemented some of the changes. I think they made something like dollar 900 after sending just two emails on our side. What we did was we took all that we learned from our time with our customer and we turn that into a webinar series called the 15 Minutes email marketing plan. And at the time, that series of webinars that we created was the most highly registered webinars that we had done. And so the lesson here is really to take the feedback to improve your content, improve on what it is that you're doing, get out of your own way and listen to what you're being told, listen to what you're actually hearing, and then act accordingly. Now, I admit that this is still something that's really hard to do sometimes, but I if you keep seeking and reminding yourself that feedback is a gift, your marketing will thank you for it. Well, friend, today's guest, Joan Noe, is director of partner engagement at senior Options. It's a not for profit that serves a network of senior living organizations looking to get into home and community based services. Senior options helps their clients get up and running, monitor quality, help them understand the financial side of things, marketing, and so much more. Now, as you're listening to this, Joan is actually retired. So a big thank you to her for spending some time with us just before hitting that milestone. Now, I'd like you to pay particular attention to how well Joan knows and understands the challenges her clients are facing and how focused she is on providing resources and support to help them navigate and overcome those challenges. Now, I asked Joan what's been the learning curve over the years? Let's pick up the conversation there.
Joan Noe: The learning curve is trying to be as clear as we can on what we offer because it's not necessarily readily understood at the outset because we look at ourselves as really not having a competitor per se. There are organizations that you can turn to that can do components of what we do, but there's not really anybody that straight up matches up with what we can offer. So, for instance, market development. We have a leader who will help you understand your own market because we're in multiple states. But she'll help you understand if there's any local regs or state regs there that are different from somewhere else. But she'll also help you. Okay, which referral sources are the best ones to target, help you develop that custom plan, those sorts of things. I mean, a consultant can come in and write a plan and tell you, here's what you need to do. Here's where you need to be getting your referrals from. But at the end of the day, they write a report and they leave. We're there hand in hand saying, okay, this is what we talked about in January, but in February, how's it looking? What are you doing in March? You know, where we're continually collaborating with that client. We're not leaving them and just leaving them to interpret things on their own, but rather hitting all the high points and the low points together, all the bumps in the road.
Dave Charest: Well, as you look back on things now, as you're kind of, again moving along, what do you think of as one of your biggest accomplishments in the role?
Joan Noe: When people come back and they say senior options, you're the one to call. When anybody talks about home health or hospice or adding it to what we call the continuum of care, where they're offering a variety of services to seniors in their market. When they say senior options, that's huge for us. But then, I mean, not a week goes by where someone says, I never heard of you till today. That challenge, therein lies the challenge. Right. So, but like I said, frequently we do get those calls. Like, I was talking to my board chair or someone else and they said, call senior options. And we love those calls, obviously.
Dave Charest: Yeah. So to that, when you're working with accounts and you're making sure that, you know, understand their needs and then, and what you have available to help them, do you also, are you also involved with the marketing of senior options as a whole to just externally to bring those people in, or are you really once people are onboarded, then you're walking through them with that.
Joan Noe: Both less so on the getting them. But I am. We do annual events, like annual conferences, for instance, that the major one in our industry, we have had a booth for the last couple of years, and so I'm the one that's responsible for planning that out, determining where we want to be on the show floor, how to communicate that we're there. What are we going to share when we talk to folks? Who else do we want to target going through the entire list of sessions to see, okay, these are our current clients. We want to go attend those sessions. These are our prospects. We want to attend those. These are what we call friends as senior options. We want those folks so we could say hi to them and they help expand our reach when they're talking to others. So it's a full on effort for that particular conference. But then we also have regional and smaller ones and other times that vendors might have their own conference where our president will speak, but we're sharing the message about that. What's the topic? When is it? And just following up on any leads or any activity that comes out of that.
Dave Charest: Gotcha. Gotcha. So when you think of your day to day kind of communications, really, when we, I guess marketing in this sense is really about how you're communicating with your existing accounts that you manage, are you the only one, like, is there a set number? Are there other people doing what you do? I guess. How does that look within the world of the business?
Joan Noe: We have a senior director of business development who I collaborate pretty closely with her. She'll look at, there's certain states we want to target, then we'll look at our strategy to get in front of those folks that they'll have an annual conference. They may have other events that we want to attend, or we may have a friend who we know and we'll get an introduction there and those sorts of things. But we collaborate pretty closely on that when it comes to other efforts. I mean, we're obviously working with our own current, hopefully very satisfied clients and getting them to spread the word for us too. That certainly helps and takes us a long way. They are a great group who serve as references for us. Obviously, we've got somebody who has just reached out and said, what do you do? Can I talk to people that you're currently working with? And they'll talk to our current clients. That helps too. But we try to be very diligent in streamlining the communication and getting the right points across because we don't want people to be confused about what we do with any marketing plan. You want to be as clear as possible and get to the right people receiving the message.
Dave Charest: Yeah. So when you're doing that, when you're communicating, because I think this is interesting because normally I know there's a mix here, but we're typically talking to people that are. We typically talk about marketing in a sense of like bringing in new business. Right. But not necessarily how you use that to continue and engage the relationship with the customers that you already have. Right. Which is obviously an important part of it when you think about the account that you manage. And so wondering if you could tell me a little bit about like, what is your approach there? Like, how do you think about communicating with the people that are already connected with you?
Joan Noe: It's a hard job that they do every day. It truly is. And for the agencies that we, well, the clients that we have working under us, they're all running an agent, a homeland community based services agency. But they're also part of a much larger organization that has related mission but different meaning. As an example, you know, there's a senior living community that serves a thousand people that live there, that they provide dining services and, you know, whole breadth, obviously the breadth of services for folks who are their campus. Well, with home and community based services, you've got a staff that goes into people's homes and provides services, so your staff doesn't always see each other. And the leader of that home and community based service agency is kind of a unicorn within their own leadership team. Everyone else is providing services. People on campus, they're the one out there doing something related but different, sort of providing home health and hospice. So we really put an effort into supporting that administrator, helping them tailor their communications to their board, to whoever they report to, and just making sure they have the data that they need to best share what's going on in their business. So we really collaborate closely with them. So did that answer the question? I want to make sure I answered your question.
Dave Charest: Yeah, I think so. So essentially, if I'm understanding it correctly, like what you're trying to do is provide services as they're your clients, to give them the resources they need to be able to do the things they need to do to be successful with their I particular faction of the group.
Joan Noe: Right, exactly.
Dave Charest: Perfect.
Joan Noe: And to know and understand how to grow their agency, too. Because one of our kind of catchphrases is, it's painful to be small. So if you're a startup, it's one thing to be small and you take on your first few patients, and then you grow a little. You grow a little, but in the early years when you're small, a couple people doing all the work, so you're on call. Those kind of challenges in healthcare, you're going to burn your people out really quickly. So not only is it better all the way around to grow, but it's better for the staff, of course, especially in this recruiting environment that we're in, where clinicians can jump and get large bonuses just for moving, switching jobs every whatever interval there might be offered. The big carrots are out there to attract them, to make moves. So we spend a lot of time, too, on employee engagement and employee satisfaction, making sure their staff feels supported and they want to stay there because that's exactly where they get their next staff members from. A happy staff member today.
Dave Charest: Yeah. Gotcha. So are you doing then? It sounds like there's opportunity here for learning events like things like that, like education, of course. So what types of things do you do there?
Joan Noe: We host an annual conference every year where we bring in all of our partners in the senior options network, and we also bring in guest speakers in our industry. So this year we're actually preparing for it. It's at the end of March, and we are based in Virginia Beach, Virginia. So we always like to say, you know, come to the beach because some of them do not live fortunate like us and live close to water. But we do put on that conference, and we really put a lot of time and energy into not focusing on operations, but focusing on strategy and growth and strengthening those leaders.
Dave Charest: Gotcha.
Joan Noe: So that's one of our initiatives.
Dave Charest: Trey, what have you found to be most effective when it comes to just communicating in your situation, then with your partners and your clients?
Joan Noe: I mean, we try multiple ways, but just like anything, you know, there's people who hear it, people who see it, and people have to do it. But, I mean, I'm a visual person, so I always want it to be written out. I want to see it, and because, you know, there may be something that I'll need later on that I'll remember. Oh, that was in, you know, that's the best way for me to learn. But we also. We have regular monthly calls with all of our clients, and in addition to that, we use constant contact to keep communications open all the time because there may be someone, you know, there likely is someone who's not participated in the call on a monthly, like the operational call, who needs to be informed about a particular topic. So we use constant contact, as you know, for several years. It's been a great tool for us.
Dave Charest: Well, I'm curious to that. What brought you to constant contact? Was it something that they were already using when you got there, or was it something that you found and brought on? Like, how did you start? Do you know how you started using it?
Joan Noe: Yep. We started in the summer of 2016. The president and I were doing at the time, we did kind of just our own email campaign. I think we just did. I mean, we were a little bit smaller, so we didn't have nearly as many recipients, but still, we would just send it out of our own email. We thought, there's got to be a better solution than this. This is not. We were still building something, but we weren't there yet. But we certainly didn't want it to look like it was coming from me or from her directly, but rather and. Or like any other email. So we started looking for solutions, and constant contact was just, once we tried it out, we thought, well, this is pretty easy, let's go. So we signed up right then and got our distribution list set up. And now I don't know how many lists we have at this point, 25 or 30, something like that just depends on which category. And of course, some people are multiple categories depending on their role.
Dave Charest: Well, talk to me a little bit about that then. So, like, what are the types of things that you like? How do you segment people out then? Like, how do you create those different lists? Like, what are those categories?
Joan Noe: Well, I'll just look at the. Like, most of our clients are on the same electronic health record system. So there's different types of user categories. Right. There's some people who are doing a component of patient care, so they would need different access than somebody who's doing a billing side of it. So those lists are segmented. And sometimes it just needs to be all users, that there's communication that applies to everyone. So that's one area. But then, like I was mentioning, our annual conference, not everybody gets invited to that, nor do we. You know, not every person at every client is going to come, but it's going to be four or five from a client. So that's one list that we have is for our annual conference, those kinds of things. And one list just totally for the leaders of the each organization. So those are a couple of lists I can think of right away.
Dave Charest: Gotcha. Yeah. So obviously you're using the email portion of the product. Are you using any other parts of the product as well to help you?
Joan Noe: Yes, we use the survey portion of the product. Each of our departments will do at least an annual survey. Sometimes they've gone more frequent than that. Just depending on something that's going on, they may do a periodic survey that's not tied to the annual one. The other, as I mentioned, our annual conference, we use the event function and we've used that for, I think every year we're planning our 8th annual event. But anyway, we use the event portion to get folks registered and then once they're registered, to communicate. Hey, this is location and hotel info and any other info that they may need that's related to that. Once we have, obviously, once we have the program ready to distribute, we distribute it that way. But we've used getting folks registered. I mean, I can't imagine doing it without constant contact because we'd be keeping it either on an excel spreadsheet or some other manual form. But there, we just know immediately we have x number of people registered as of today and so we can quickly report out anybody we haven't heard from those kinds of things. Whatever follow up we need to do from there.
Dave Charest: Gotcha.
Joan Noe: Very handy for us.
Dave Charest: Yeah, it starts to get unruly if you're manually kind of thinking and tracking all of those things. I'm glad you're using those features.
Joan Noe: We're definitely a small business and we're not talking hundreds and hundreds of people. I can't. If we were bigger, then it would certainly be even more useful. But yeah, it's very handy for us.
Dave Charest: Yeah. As you're in there using the account and those types of things, what has been your favorite constant contact feature?
Joan Noe: I mean, I knew you were good. I had a feeling you're gonna ask me this and I'm gonna say buttons. Once I discovered how to use buttons, I was just like, this is so simple, but this is so me. Just like, you want this information, click right here. And doing that, that's been my favorite. Once I figured out pretty early on, I love too, that when I go in and I'm, I'm in there every day for one reason or another, but when I go in and I see something new, I'm like, oh, okay, this is new. So, and I'm in the process of training the person who's going to fill in for me, and I just said, well, this is new. I mean, I was just in yesterday's, I saw something new today. So I have to say constant contact. The other thing, when people talk to me about it, I'm just like, it is a very well run organization that whenever I've had a glitch or a problem, like back to the event registration, I do that once a year, and I can mostly remember what happened last year, but then I get to some odd thing that happens, and when I need the help desk or I'm not sure quite what it is, but when I need support or problem solving, I get the answer quickly, and it's. And then I also usually end up learning something else. Their support has been phenomenal in this time. I mean, if it wasn't, we probably would have looked for something else a long time ago. But their support, and it doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's just like, it's quick and we can get a resolution quickly, and I can move on to what else I'm working on.
Dave Charest: I love that. I love to hear that. I know. That's one of the things that, you know, I think our founders really, of the company noticed really early on is that small businesses need that type of support, and which is why that's one of the big things that we have still, that you can pick up the phone and do all that if you need it. So I'm glad to hear that that's helpful for you. If you were to offer a tip to another business similar to yours, or maybe even not, what would your number one tip be for a similar business? Using constant contact, I would say.
Joan Noe: I mean, at first, I think get one person who really becomes familiar with kind of everything that's offered there, because there's way more there than even that. I've mentioned that we don't necessarily use, but we probably could if we knew a little bit more about it. I'm thinking of, like, polls or something else. But the other thing is just, I mean, the resources are there. Use them. You're already, it's not very expensive. You're already paying for it. So get in there and use the account and maximize the value of it, because it's really got some good reporting tools and some handy, handy things that should be helpful.
Dave Charest: What does a typical day look like for you?
Joan Noe: Well, right now, it's hard to say.
Dave Charest: It's a little different right now.
Joan Noe: Right. And we're well in senior options is we're a small but mighty team. I mean, we have about two dozen people, including our billing team, which is the largest group of us within the organization. And certainly health information technology is second biggest group. But communication, I mean, that's always been my niche. But if I put what I do into one category, that's it, it's just, do I have my fingers on the pulse of what our clients need? And then am I effectively communicating back within our team, what types of tools do we have? What types? Because I've tried different things over time, meaning project management tools or communication tools, what works best? And am I meeting the needs of the organization and the individuals that are part of this organization? Right. Because everyone's got their different styles and how they like things, and somebody whose style is vastly different from me, I can learn from. But when it comes to a typical day, I mean, that's kind of my headline. Did I recognize a need somewhere? Did I communicate that need? Is there a hot deadline that we're either right on target for or that we've missed? You know, kind of keeping all those balls and the air? So I love the challenge of that. Yeah, I really do.
Dave Charest: Well, how do you keep your finger on the pulse of that, then? Because I think when we talk to people, just thinking about how they're marketing and communicating, it's one of those things where it's like you really need to understand the audience that you're speaking to and providing them information that is of value to them. And if you can do that, you're going to have their attention. They're going to be interested in what you're sending to them. They're going to be looking forward to receiving those things. And so how do you stay on the pulse of that, to know what to send, what to communicate? How do you do that?
Joan Noe: We've been structured and we are built as a team, that all feedback is welcome. Not that you need to have a thick skin, but that you should expect feedback at all times. Because people, I'll get done with this, or I'll get done with a webinar or something, and people will be like, you talk too fast at this point. But the constructive criticism, where it's not, hey, great, you know, everything's great, and you're trying to put something shiny on something that really doesn't warrant that that's false, and that's not fair to anybody, you know, but constructive criticism, just saying, hey, I don't think that came out the way you wanted it to, but be more specific and tell me how or why. Because we're all moving too fast, we're all chasing something, and everybody's got a lot of distractions around them phones and other devices at all times. So you got to get the attention, and you've got to make sure your message is as clear as it can be. And that's getting harder and harder every day. So we are regularly looking to each other for feedback and looking externally for feedback. I can think of an example of some of a tool that we've used and produced and created for kind of our prospect lists for a long time. And we think it's well done and refined. But recently we got feedback that a particular prospect didn't like it. And, you know, we're like, we'll dig into that. The person that presented it, she said, she said, tell me. Tell me what they said. Tell me how we can do it better. It's not, well, we don't want to offend her or we don't want to say that, or we've been doing this. It's just, if it's, someone says that it's not right, then that's that person's problem. We don't look at it that way. It's our problem. It's our problem to be as clear as we can and to communicate as well as we can. So, I mean, we pride ourselves on that. We want to do it better. We know we're not perfect, so we kind of go into it. We're going to do the best we can and be as strong as we can, but when we make mistakes, we got to own them.
Dave Charest: Yeah. I love that point of view. And, I mean, even aside from mistakes, right. Sometimes it's not even a mistake. You know, I look at it coming from kind of like a content background. It's like you have to put out what you think is the best piece of content or material, whatever it is that you can put out in that particular moment. And then you have to see who shows up, consumes it and what they say and interact with it. And to your point, it's not a negative necessarily. It's like they're telling you if they have feedback and it is in a constructive way, it's they're telling you what they need in order to get more value from that thing that you're providing them. Right. And so I think that's a really great.
Joan Noe: Exactly.
Dave Charest: Point of view to have an approach to that. I love that a lot, actually. When you think about just if, you know, as you're looking back and you've done this for the years that you've done it, and what's the best piece of marketing advice you would offer someone?
Joan Noe: Clarity and consistency and message back to? We're moving very fast, but you can always add on a whole lot more words, but you should recognize that you're at a point where you've lost the audience. So dial it back, get to your top point, your elevator speech, and be done right, because that's what they'll hear. Hopefully, that is what they'll remember. But if you try to confuse them, and that's the other thing we do, too. We spend, as an organization, we spend a lot of time trying to understand, you know, informal way, trying to do our personality assessments, whatever type. You know, there's many, many tools out there, but we try to dial it back to, okay, that's, this is what this person is. This is what we think is motivating them. This is what we think their goals are, etc. Etcetera, you know, and trying to match up and align and get the communication that goes to that person as clear as possible so that it's useful to them, not just created, because that's the way we like to say it or do it.
Dave Charest: Awesome.
Joan Noe: That's hard.
Dave Charest: It is. I mean, that's the challenge, right? That's always the big challenge. But I think the more it sounds like, I mean, obviously, you've, you know, you've been doing this for a while, and just some of the things you've said here, again, like, in terms of, like, taking that feedback and understanding, when are the times to implement and do something to make adjustments is really important. So, yeah, I mean, anything else you'd like to add, Joan?
Joan Noe: Yeah, I was thinking of something else. I mean, our mission is out there, and our mission is strong, and we live by that every day. Right. I mean, constant contact really gives us the ability to present our information in a really polished way. And that's, like I said initially, early on, the ease of use and the ability to present things in a nice way was very attractive to us. So it's also just been a great resource for us. I mean, at the end of the day, everyone's a marketer, everyone's out there. Everyone that works for senior options is marketing senior options and should present themselves as an authoritative leader on a daily basis because that's what we do and we're good at it. So not to be arrogant about it, but I'm back to it is a hard job. I think, within the group, I have kind of the easiest route, I would say, because I'm not a financial person, I'm not an hit person, but I'm the one who's trying to make sure the needs are met as best they can. So that's a challenge I accept every day.
Dave Charest: Well, friend, I do want to recap some items from that discussion for you. Number one, know your customer. It's really important to understand the day to day challenges your customers may be facing so that you know how to best serve them in relation to your product or service. What do they need to be successful? Number two, try to provide information in various formats. People learn in different ways. As Joan mentioned, there are people who need to see it, hear it or do it. Provide different forms of communication. Calls, emails, webinars and even podcasts are helpful. Lastly, be open to feedback. Welcome that constructive feedback so you can always be improving on how you're communicating with your audience. We're all moving fast. Feedback helps you make sure your message is as clear as it can be. All right friend, here's your action item for today. Set up a call with a customer, set aside some time to talk with one of your favorite customers and ask them for some honest feedback about what's working well, what could be improved, and if there's anything they wish you offered that you currently may not. All of that will help you serve your customers better. Alright friend, until next time, I hope you 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@constantcontact.com. 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.