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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! New episodes coming in July!
On today's episode, we're celebrating National Small Business Month by taking your questions live in Boston and New York City. This is to 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. And at Constant Contact, we're here to help.
Dave Charest:Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining us for another episode of the podcast. Let's get this thing started with my favorite cohost, the one and only Kelsi Carter is here. Hi, Kelsi.
Dave Charest:Hi, Dave. How are you?
Kelsi Carter:I'm wonderful. How are you?
Dave Charest:I'm fantastic. Good to see you. I feel like we haven't been in front of the microphone in this way for a little while.
Kelsi Carter:I know. It's been a minute, honestly.
Dave Charest:It has. Well, it's good to, be in front of the microphone with you again.
Kelsi Carter:It's good to speak in front of you, virtually.
Dave Charest:Sounds very strange. It's May. Happy May to you as we record this episode. May also means that it is National Small Business Week, at least earlier in the month it was. Of course, we like to extend that a bit to the whole month.
Dave Charest:And I would argue Constant Contacts likes to celebrate small businesses all year long. But something we did in honor of National Small Business Week was take this little show on the road a little bit, didn't we?
Kelsi Carter:We sure did. It was actually a lot of fun. You've been speaking at Small Business Expo events in Boston and New York.
Dave Charest:Yes. Yes. I have. These are events that I speak to across the country, actually. But we decided since it was May, we were gonna do a little special episode, which is why we're here today.
Dave Charest:And I do a keynote on the foundations of digital marketing success, Marketal. What is Marketal? Have you ever done any Marketal?
Kelsi Carter:No. I feel like that's a new new type of marketing. It's gonna
Dave Charest:be a new thing that we're gonna bring to market. It's called Marketal. Yeah. Anyway, so after the keynote sessions, we invited people to come over to the Constant Contact booth, and we had a little ask Dave session set up there where people could come and ask their marketing related questions. Kelsey, you were there, of course.
Dave Charest:What'd you think about bringing that little show on the road?
Kelsi Carter:It was. It was actually a lot of fun. It's great to meet people in general, but also to meet people in person. I feel like there's just
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Kelsi Carter:A different type of connection there when you're in person. You can see their body language and just like their facial features and everything like that. It just feels like a bit more of a natural connection.
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Kelsi Carter:So it was really great speaking to all the people that we did, them coming over to the booth, and just recording in that environment too was a lot of fun. Because, obviously, there's a lot of things going around, but being able to hone in and have a conversation in the middle of that, I thought was really neat and fun for us to do.
Dave Charest:Yeah. A lot of hustle and bustle on the floor. Interesting to your point with all of that, really. We did not have headphones or any things like that. We were kind of doing just a a casual conversation, and then we have some technology that allows us to record that and take all that background noise out.
Dave Charest:So you may hear some heightened speech as we're having these conversations, but we listen to it. But, yeah, to your point, a lot of really fun, great conversations. I love seeing people in person, of course. It's always fun to just be able to have those discussions and really learn a little bit more about people's businesses and answer specifically to what it is that they're doing. So we're excited to bring you this episode here today, a little special edition of Ask Dave.
Dave Charest:And our first question comes from Aleah in New York City. So let's go to her.
Aleah Carter:My name is Aleah Carter. I'm currently working with Jillian Circus. We're a full service digital marketing agency Okay. Based in Long Island, New York. And the question I have for you is if somebody who is a smaller business who's just getting started, they have no clue about email marketing at all Yeah.
Aleah Carter:What are some of the things that you would suggest to them, like, get started with?
Dave Charest:The the top things I would think about would be, one, think about where your existing business comes from today. Right? So maybe you're just getting started and you don't have any business. Right? So you gotta do some work.
Dave Charest:You gotta I think one of the things that we find from the folks that we've talked to that have been successful is they really have deep connections within the local community. So if you're just getting started, I think those are always the best place to start. What can you do locally where you're meeting people face to face? Oftentimes, I think it's easy to default to the online digital stuff just because it's so easy, but it takes a lot of work to make the safe connections where if I'm having a conversation with you, right, and then I'm keeping in touch with you online, but we already have an engagement. Right?
Dave Charest:So we have a relationship, and so it's a little bit easier. Can you kind of flip that a little bit?
Aleah Carter:Right. Like preexisting, like, contact to contact conversation.
Dave Charest:Start to strengthen those. Right? So it's like you start with the face to face thing.
Aleah Carter:Okay.
Dave Charest:Know who your audience is in terms of, like, who is gonna actually buy your product, right? So you need to understand that and get very clear on that because that's what's gonna allow you you're just having a conversation about the moving and storage business, right? Where he has a residential portion of the business as well as a commercial side of the business. And I was like, well, where do you get most of your business from? And he's like, well, probably the commercial side.
Dave Charest:Right? So, okay. So if we focus on the commercial side, well then who are you talking to there? Right? So you see what starts to happen is like now you're getting very narrow or narrower Yeah.
Dave Charest:To who you're speaking to. But you see how they're very different. Right? So residential conversation is very different from the the the commercial conversation. But once you start to identify that, then you start to say, okay, well then, where are these people?
Dave Charest:How do I get in touch with these people? How do I start to have more of those conversations? And then how do the things that I'm sending speak more to what it is that their needs are? So I think those are the some important things to start doing. When you start doing that, then you're able to be more pointed and more specific in what it is that you're trying to do, and your content is gonna resonate.
Dave Charest:But I would say focus locally, have conversations so you can learn who those people are, then start to figure out how do you message those people? How do you do things with them? And then from there, how do you put a plan in place to consistently be in the places that those people are? And how do you get in front of them more? Because that's ultimately what's gonna end up bringing in more business.
Dave Charest:Right? They need to know you, they need to start to like you, they need to trust you, and those are the people that we do business with.
Dave Charest:Okay. There you go. There's our first question. Great chatting with Aliyah, of course. I just wanna recap some of those things that we talked about there.
Dave Charest:Right? Like, one, get involved locally. Really important, I think. Time again, we've kind of heard that over some of these conversations that we've had with people that really we often forget about the local stuff because we think, oh, digital. I'm gonna do all this stuff online.
Dave Charest:But even as we were talking in the intro here, just being able to talk to people face to face adds a whole new element to it that I think is important. So get involved locally. Two, make sure you know who you're marketing to because that's gonna influence everything you do from where you go, what you say, how you say it, and all of that kind of thing. And then make a plan to consistently get in front of people. Right?
Dave Charest:So I think those are the big takeaways from that conversation.
Kelsi Carter:Yeah. And I think, honestly, people overlook making a plan or making a schedule, but that is honestly where you start and that's what kinda guides you your way. But what are some ways that Constant Contact can come into play here?
Dave Charest:Well, you know, I think obviously, if you're using Constant Contact, as you start to think about building those relationships that you have, you know, you can use Constant Contact as a light CRM of sorts, right, where you can keep your contact details and notes, and take notes on those things that may happen outside of Constant Contact, for example. Right? So if you have, you know, everything is kind of built around either a phone number or an email address. But if you have that, bring that into Constant Contact, and you can start taking those notes. Right?
Dave Charest:And start thinking about, you know, who are those people in your community that you're reaching out to or who you maybe be cut potential customers, whatever the case may be. Then there's the segmentation piece, right, that we talked about. I think, you know, obviously, Constant Contact has tools that allow you to do that. So you can start thinking about the different groups that make sense for your business, and start putting people into those groups, for example. And then, of course, as you start doing things from the social side, right, we're talking about putting that plan into place and consistently getting in front of people.
Dave Charest:I think it's really about thinking through the scheduling your post through constant contact, for example. Of course, you can, you know, start thinking about emailing those folks and using those segments, SMS of course. And then if you're trying to bring people face to face, you can even run and manage your events through Constant Contact as well. And so those are some ways that you can really start to think about using the product to help with those things that we talked about there. Let's go to our next conversation.
Dave Charest:This is with David Williams, and we're in Boston for this one.
David Williams:I own an HR consulting firm called talent, Triton Talent Solutions, and I focus specifically on recruiting efforts for small companies. Companies are usually a size of 10 to a hundred people focused on supporting them with the recruiting process.
Dave Charest:Love that. That's right in our sweet spot of like companies. We work for small businesses, of course, at Constant Contact in that kind of range, right? From zero employees to, you know, 10 is our sweet spot, but up to like a hundred or so, right, Correct, yeah. So you're three months into this from our conversation a little earlier.
Dave Charest:What's on your mind right now just in terms of just like marketing and that type of stuff?
David Williams:Yeah, so for me, I've always been in the corporate environment. So now to go and own my own business, it's really a lot of grassroots marketing efforts, learning how to promote my business, learning how email marketing works, learning about SEO, learning how to earn new clients. So for me, listening to you, I think my question really is if I'm in professional services as opposed to retail or individual products, what's the best way to go about building my business and utilizing what you offer for professional services?
Dave Charest:So I would say for particularly since you're gonna be talking to other business owners like that, I gotta assume you're on LinkedIn.
David Williams:Correct.
Dave Charest:What are you doing there now?
David Williams:LinkedIn is my core, just in terms of networking with businesses, really business owners, CEOs, heads of HR, my target market. So yes, everyone is there. So a majority of my material are tips, tricks, things that I do within recruiting to help coach business owners. But really, I think for me, it's what's the consistency of that? What is promoting opportunities within companies?
David Williams:What's my strategy?
Dave Charest:So are you finding anything that's working for you there at this point? Like, are you actually getting any business from that?
David Williams:Not yet. I mean, it's been three months. I have over 7,000 connections during my twenty years of what I do. So I know I have the audience. It's just a matter of putting a strategy in place.
Dave Charest:So a couple of things that I would look at. So, because similar, right, we mentioned kind of the same market in many ways, and so one of the things that I look at, one, like what is my content plan gonna be? So like what are the questions that this audience will have? The people that you're typically working at. So like how can you create content around those questions to be helpful?
Dave Charest:But then I would also start looking at one of the things, and I don't know if you did this already, you may, but one of the things I found interesting is when I started doing this, I had a lot of professional connections, right? Because I'm in the corporate world as well. And so I had like 70% of the people engaging with my content were not my target audience. And so if you look at the reporting within LinkedIn, you can actually see the audience that you're reaching, what that breakdown is. If you go back and look in the back end of that, have you done this at all?
David Williams:Not yet, no.
Dave Charest:So you should look at that because that would be one of the key things I would start to look at and say like, okay, the people that I am reaching, is it my target market? Because you might find, oh, I'm actually not. So that means that's gonna change your strategy, right? Because I'm I'm meeting I'm actually talking to people who know me professionally already in corporate environments, right? So like maybe your messaging is then like, Hey, you know, I'm doing this thing.
Dave Charest:It'd be great if you could share with anybody that you know that has this, right? But then you can start to look as you do this. And I would say, typically what I found, three months in, good, don't give up, keep in with that, right? But typically, I usually say like anywhere between six to twelve months is really where you start to see things change after doing consistent activity, right? So then, so for example, now I've noticed like I've been able to shift that audience to now I have typically week to week, I'll look at it and I have like a 43% of people now are in the zero to a hundred.
Dave Charest:Two hundred is where they break down in LinkedIn, but that zero to a hundred space. So I know, okay, now I'm actually hitting my audience versus what it was before, which was maybe 10% of that particular audience that I was hitting. Right? So I think that would be the first thing, right? Set your kind of benchmarks and then say like, okay, I need to shift this.
Dave Charest:So what can I do to start to shift that? And then based on the audience that you already have, then I would say, are you doing any local event type things? Are you out there meeting people at like, things like this for example?
David Williams:Yeah. So it's a lot of face to face. I'm involved in two chambers here in Massachusetts.
Dave Charest:Okay. Great.
David Williams:A lot of lot of face to face networking events. Just, you know, getting the name out there because I have a large audience, but it's just a matter of gaining that word-of-mouth as you had mentioned.
Dave Charest:And do you have those folks on an email list or something like that that you can contact them Yes,
David Williams:yes I do.
Dave Charest:Great. And do you have a consistency there?
David Williams:Not yet. Okay. So that'd be It's building the network and building the pipeline.
Dave Charest:I would say a good thing to do as you're even just getting started, and like a lot of times people feel like they don't have enough yet to like really get started. As with anything, I think sometimes, right, you might be bad
Dave Charest:at it at first, right? Right. And so it's not a bad idea to start writing your emails because the people that you do have on that list will be your key people that you already have relationships with that will probably be able to give you feedback. They're like, Oh, I have a question about this. So you kind of encourage that so that as you're starting to build your list to even more people that you may not have those relationships with, you're going to be able to know the things that they're interested in and be able to build that relationship quicker.
Dave Charest:Right? So I think it's better to start now versus waiting to start because you're gonna learn a lot. Even though it might be a small thing, you're gonna learn enough to be able to make what you're doing when it matters more beneficial to you versus just getting started when you Now I have those lists, right? You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
David Williams:And then is the future of those newsletters? Are those just quick contacts? Or what does that entail with that outreach?
Dave Charest:It could be a number of things, right? So I think I like to look at it, so like you said you're sharing tips on
David Williams:Recruiting efforts.
Dave Charest:Right, that type of stuff. So that makes sense. I like to think of them as like, okay, here can I do quick tips, but then how can I use the emails to maybe go a little bit more in-depth, start to show a little bit more about how you think about it and make people aware of like, Hey, know, you want any help doing this, I'm available to help you to do this type of thing, right? And so like, so for example, like I'm always sharing tips or clips from the Be a Marketer podcast, for example, right? But my newsletter, I actually go deep into something that I've learned through a conversation that I've had.
Dave Charest:And then like, here's what they did to apply that. Here's how you can apply that too. Right? So it's a little bit different. So it's not like because if you're just doing the same thing on every channel, right?
Dave Charest:Then there's no really reason for people to follow you on other channels. And so these are people that have typically raised their hand and say, Yes, I wanna hear from you. So those are people that you can start to build that relationship a little bit more because you know they're interested in your business. So that's what I would start to do. Think of a frequency that works for you.
Dave Charest:A lot of times people will bite off more than they can chew because you get excited. Like you might be here today and you heard something like, Oh yeah, I'm gonna do that. And you're like, Okay. And then like after a week, you're like, I can't do that. Right?
Dave Charest:Because you're too busy doing these other things. And so whether it's once a week, maybe it's every other week, maybe it's once a month. I feel like that's like the least you would wanna do, but it's just about the consistency of showing up. Because again, although people may not be doing business with you right now, the people that are paying attention are seeing you, you're sending signals that you're here and you mean business, right? Because you're consistently doing it.
Dave Charest:And so I would really think about, yeah, like start to look at who are the people that you do have on those lists. And this is like manual stuff you'll do to start. But like, oh, and look at it for real. You can even start to think about, okay, I like to break things down in like four groups, peers, pros, patrons, promoters. Right?
Dave Charest:So peers, you might have people that you know just industry wide that may never do business with you, but they may know you to refer you or something like that. Then you've got pros. You might have people that These might be more people you look to on social media, for example, that who are in a place where you would like to get your business, so you kind of learn from them. The patrons, of course, are people that will be your customers, right? And then the promoters, the people that just help get the word out about you because they like your content, although they might never be somebody that you connect with, right?
Dave Charest:So if you could start to look at and bucket those people, then you start to have pretty specific lists of messages and ways you wanna talk to them to help move your business forward with whatever that you do. Those are some basic ways I'd start to think it happens.
David Williams:Yeah, no, someone that's brand new to it, that's great, it's helpful.
Dave Charest:You know?
Dave Charest:Just do something, right? Like I said up there, right? Pick something because that's, it starts to feel overwhelming and then you end up not doing anything. And then you're like, you know what I mean? So if you just pick something, what's most important right now, then you can start to see like, you have a very clear idea of what you're trying to get from it.
Dave Charest:You can start to see if that's really doing Right?
David Williams:Yeah. That's really beneficial because for me, I think it was the frequency because I have so much other activities to be doing when you run your business. Yep. It's everything, you know?
Dave Charest:I gotta tell you, it's a lot easier today too. I don't know if you're using the AI at all. Yes. But like ChatGPT and those types of things. Right?
Dave Charest:Like, you can really give it, here's what I'm doing. Here's my point of view on it. You can have it ask you questions so you can get your knowledge into it. And then say, now help me come up with an idea of like, I'm gonna do a weekly newsletter. What type of content should I have in there?
Dave Charest:And it can spit back ideas to you that then you can refine, right? Because you want it to be your point of view. You want it to be your voice. You don't want it to sound like ChatGPT, but that, right? Like you can do all of that.
Dave Charest:And then, all right, now instead of like, what do I do? You've got a whole list of things that you can do. And then it's just about making it, like using that to help you make it more yours. And then, so it's just like, it's never been an easier time to kind of do this stuff.
David Williams:Oh, know. Yeah, it's a great tool. It just, again, to be in my voice is first and foremost, but it's a great tool to use. You'd also mentioned different social platforms and trying to have a partnership between at least two. So for me, I guess the closest would be Facebook.
David Williams:For me, just in terms of the groups, I've already networked very highly within the HR network in the groups, but to have a presence there in partnership with LinkedIn being my number one, what advice do you have specific to that?
Dave Charest:So this is important. I think one of the things that people often forget, and I'm sure you're probably doing this, but the groups are huge. The more you can engage in the groups, because those are people specifically for a particular thing, And if you're there showing up, and I like to think of it like this, think about that as a way to build your content engine. So that means somebody is having a conversation or asking a question and you have that expertise. How can you go in and really answer that question?
Dave Charest:Get that really detailed, and then you can copy and paste that answer that you wrote to chat GPT and be like, this is how I would answer this question. How can I make derivative content from that so I can put that on LinkedIn? Wow. That's great. So now you're wowing somebody with like, holy crap.
Dave Charest:Like, yes. That really helped me. And then that's where path leads back to you. Like, hey, if you ever need more help or you, you know, whatever, here's how you can contact me. Or I'm doing weekly tips if I'm making that up, right?
Dave Charest:Whatever it is, join my list, right? Like that type of thing. But you're always giving and engaging with that. A lot of people just go out and say like, Hey, I'm doing this or doing that, right? But they don't actually participate.
Dave Charest:It's through the participation that things act, the magic happens in those groups. So that's really important. But then by doing that, you have to do double duty with it, right? So that it doesn't feel like I'm just spending a lot of time here. You're actually spending the time there to do something meaningful, but then have that to take to use for your other purposes, right?
Dave Charest:And I think that's the big key people miss because it's so easy to feel disposable.
David Williams:Right, right, right,
Dave Charest:right. But it's like everything that you do, if you think about, all right, how can I maximize the use of it? And then then it's like in your newsletter. It's like, know, I was having a conversation with the other day about this, and they asked this. Here's how I think about it, here's how I broke it down.
Dave Charest:You you having the same problem?
David Williams:Right. Right.
Dave Charest:That's very hit reply. Right?
David Williams:You never would have thought of it that way, but that's Yeah. A creative way that, like you said, don't duplicate what you're putting in one platform on the other, but this is more maximizing your conversation in one
Dave Charest:And then being derivative to the other Right? Makes sense. So that's how I'd start to think about it.
David Williams:Awesome.
Dave Charest:Dave, great talking to you. Wish you the best of luck with everything. Thank you.
Kelsi Carter:Okay. So there was a lot in that one, but I really liked when you talked about using email to go a bit deeper than your social posts. Like, yes, share those quick tips, but then use your newsletter to explain how you think and how you can help.
Dave Charest:Yeah. I mean, think that's the important thing. You know, one of the things I talk about in the presentation is really this idea of using all of the channels together, but getting away from that idea of just copying and pasting. Because really, each of the channels has their own strengths, and, you know, email, of course, is something you can go more in-depth into content, and it's content that likely people will be more interested in because they've actually raised their hand and signed up to be on your email list. And so it's really that idea of thinking about, okay, how do you take the theme?
Dave Charest:How do you take the things that you're talking about on a regular basis, but then do the right things for each of the channels so that people have a reason to follow you on each of those things, and you're kind of reinforcing that message. And so some other things I think that came out of that conversation, which I I really enjoyed, there's really a lot of things here. And so one, think about the content that you're gonna create and who that content is for. Again, we're probably gonna hear this theme come up a lot in these conversations. Right?
Dave Charest:But again, who you're talking to is gonna drive a lot of what you do. You can check your reports. Right? See who you're reaching. You can make adjustments to your strategy.
Dave Charest:That includes your social channels, of course, what you're seeing within Constant Contact can all help you start to make better decisions or at least more informed decisions about what it is that you want to talk about and what it is that you want to share with people. I think the big thing to hear from our conversation with David, it it meant particularly when you start thinking about what are you going to do from a consistent basis. I come from a content background, and and typically, you're when you're thinking about kind of building that content muscle and regularly sharing content and trying to build an audience and trying to do something with that, I think you need to give yourself at least a commitment of six to twelve months to really start to see things happen. You're gonna see little things along the way, so you wanna set small benchmarks for yourself. Right?
Dave Charest:But it's really kind of after that six month mark that you really start to pick up some momentum, and it's almost like a snowball at that point. Right? Where you're like, okay, like, now people are starting to pay attention, and people are maybe engaging a little bit more with your content. Again, if you're paying attention to understand who it is that you're talking to, and and pay attention to who is showing up as you're doing those things. But that's where those things start to really start to pick up, and then kind of push you into another element of what it is that you're doing from your marketing standpoint.
Dave Charest:I mean, again, take advantage of those face to face events. Don't get so seduced by the digital parts of it that you forget. Take advantage of that face to face stuff, because that's always gonna trump what you do from a digital perspective. I like to think of as face to face first, and use digital as a means with which to continue that relationship versus the other way around. I mean, the other way around works as well, but I think it's always gonna be much stronger when you have that face to face connection.
Dave Charest:And, you know, as you're meeting people online, it's always good to try to bring those people together because when you then meet them face to face, again, it's gonna strengthen that relationship. So I think that's important. Other thing to mention that we talked about with this idea of really sticking with or choosing a frequency that you can actually commit to, that's doable for you, because I think people often get excited and they over commit and overextend themselves. And that ends up being a thing that it works to your detriment. Right?
Dave Charest:Because you end up doing like, oh, I can't keep up with this anymore. And so instead of being excited about doing the thing, right, you're like, oh, I gotta do the thing again. And then that leads to I couldn't keep up, and so now I'm not gonna do anything. And really, the idea is if you don't wait until you're ready. Right?
Dave Charest:Get started doing something, but do something that you can consistently commit to because that's when you're gonna start to see the benefit from it. Again, lots of things here. Mix up your communications. Right? So depending on who you're talking to, it may just be sometimes it might just be checking in with people.
Dave Charest:Right? Versus the overly templated email, for example. Right? Where maybe you just send a plain text email and just say, checking in, seeing how things were going. Any things you wanna connect on or something like that, where other emails, of course, can be you know, we often talk about this idea of promotional and non promotional emails.
Dave Charest:Right? So things that provide education and then things that are to promote something that you're doing, usually like a sale or something like that, for example, more of a sales related email. Right? So, you know, those are all things that you can start thinking about. And then don't forget that, again, in your emails, you can go deeper into some of those conversations that you're having.
Dave Charest:Don't be afraid also in the beginning. You might need to do some manual stuff. Right? Not everything needs to be scalable, for example. Right?
Dave Charest:It could be something where, you know, I often talk about this idea of the four p's in terms of audience. Right? So David and I, we were talking about that a bit. Right? Peers, pros, patrons, and promoters.
Dave Charest:So maybe that's even a simple way to get started. Right? Think about who the people are that you could be communicating with, wherever that may be, and think of them in those buckets and how you would have messages to those people in that. Embrace AI, and of course, the things that you're doing. A quick way to get started, of course, is just even starting using the the AI tools within Constant Contact to get your feet wet.
Dave Charest:But I think that's AI is something that is likely not gonna go away. And the more you can look to incorporate it to enhance what you're doing, I think the better off that we're gonna be. And I would probably say, in many ways, maybe the number one thing here when it comes to social that we talked about was and I love that David was doing this on some level, but really being involved in social groups. So if you got a Facebook group that speaks to things in your industry or whatever the case may be, engage and participate in those groups because you're gonna learn so much. And this isn't about selling.
Dave Charest:This is just about being part of that community. And those engagements will help you with content ideas. It will help you provide content that you can, you know, talk to people in the group, but then take that and use that for something else that you're doing and doing double duty with that work. And so there was a lot of things we kinda tackled in there. We've had a couple of conversations like that, some we'll hear a little bit later on.
Dave Charest:But whew, I don't know, Kelsi. I'll stop talking.
Dave Charest:Yeah. Pretty good. That sounds good.
Dave Charest:That's cool. Wait. It sounds good that I'll stop talking or the stuff that I said sounds good?
Kelsi Carter:It's a stop talking.
Dave Charest:Okay. Oh, great. Okay. Good. So let's go to our next question, and this one is from Sophie in New York City.
Sophie Lee:My name is Sophie Lee. I run a productions company, a multimedia productions company. My question is, what would be the best marketing strategy for someone who is introverted?
Dave Charest:That's a good one. So how do you feel comfortable communicating?
Sophie Lee:Most comfortable communication is usually sometimes texting or emails because I don't have to talk to the person.
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Sophie Lee:And I don't have to be face to face with them because, like, I get nervous in different type of scenarios if I don't feel ultimately comfortable with people or around a certain person or anything or maybe a person might, for some reason, intimidate me in a certain manner and I need that person. I'm trying to figure out a best way to connect with people when I'm stuck in that introverted way Preach. And I don't get the chance to be comfortable to talk to people.
Dave Charest:So so there are some things, right, I think you gotta learn to, like, start to ease yourself into getting more comfortable, right, with doing that. Because ultimately, like, you're gonna have to talk to people, right? And you kinda can't get away from but I think the easy ways to start thinking about it to get started in our what are the things that you feel comfortable with that allow you to like so, like, you're filming this conversation that we're having right now. Right? So, like, what if you were doing this more of a your area of expertise, you're sitting down.
Dave Charest:I mean, if you're comfortable with, like, a close friend that you're really comfortable with, have them ask you questions about your industry. Record that. Take this, transcribe it. You can cut this up into clips, which I'm gonna assume that maybe that's what you're gonna do with some of this stuff. Right?
Dave Charest:But then that opens up all these different areas where you can use content in different forms written. Right? You can turn that into something if you're using things like ChatGPT now. Like, this is what I'm doing. Like, I mean, normally, would have my camera set up.
Dave Charest:Right? But we're getting this audio. I use the camera part to do just me, and then I will use that for LinkedIn videos. But then I'll take that and like, oh, I had this really great conversation. This is what we talked about.
Dave Charest:I wanna go deeper into that idea. And then I'll create an email, and that will go into my newsletter subscribers. Right? And so it's all about finding the place that you're comfortable. I'm comfortable in front of the microphone.
Dave Charest:I'm comfortable in front of the camera. So I'll try to do as much of that stuff as I can. But if you're not and you're just more comfortable sitting down for a coffee with somebody or something that or even if it's a phone call. Right?
Sophie Lee:I could do phone calls.
Dave Charest:Even if it's okay. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna wake up every morning. Mhmm. And before I do anything, I'm gonna write for twenty minutes, and I'm just gonna share my ideas.
Sophie Lee:I'm good with that.
Dave Charest:Because then you can take that and then turn that into other things. And it's just getting out of your own way to do that so you have something to do something with. Because marketing today, I think in many ways is the constant communication. Right? It is the social media.
Dave Charest:It is the email. And you need to fuel that in so many ways. And the only way you do it is I like to call it by doing double duty. Even day to day, if you're in the office, you're in a meeting, or do you have any employees, or do you have people that you work with on a regular, or is it just you?
Sophie Lee:I have a small set of people. It's me and about seven of my friends that I ended up hiring for into content creation and film as well.
Dave Charest:Right. So maybe it's like, how do you turn the cameras around so that when you're talking through a particular thing that you're working on, what does that look like? Right? Maybe show some behind the scenes where now you're not focused on, oh, shit. This thing's happening.
Dave Charest:Right? It's more, no. We're working. And I'm gonna assume you love the work that you do. Yes.
Dave Charest:I love
Sophie Lee:I've been doing it since seven.
Dave Charest:Right? Well, there you go. So now it's like, I'm doing this work. I'm ignoring this. That just happens to be there.
Dave Charest:But then it's something that you're able to use and then create something with that could show someone else who might be interested in hiring you how fucking awesome she is at her job, how much she loves that. You're just getting out of the, oh, I don't like to do that part of it.
Sophie Lee:No cameras, please.
Dave Charest:Right. No? No photos. Right. Right.
Dave Charest:So those are some ways I would think about it. And I know it's sometimes it's an emotional thing to try to overcome too being an introvert. My wife is an introvert. Right? She's like an extroverted introvert where she's in front of people.
Dave Charest:She's like very like blah blah blah. But then she's like, my god. I gotta go now.
Sophie Lee:Yeah. Said that on a route. Sorry.
Dave Charest:Get energy from being around people. Right? But that's the thing. Right? That she just knows where her limits are and what she should do, but then you just lean into the things that you're comfortable with so that you can, at some point, maybe push yourself outside your comfort zone too because that's gonna help you grow.
Sophie Lee:I'm currently working on that.
Kelsi Carter:Shout out introverts. I'm actually a bit of an introvert myself, which I'm sure Dave you picked up on.
Dave Charest:Uh-huh. Uh-huh. We see. I'm an extrovert in history. Get you're wondering if you were not too sure about that.
Kelsi Carter:I don't think anyone was wondering because I think they can already pick up on that. But I really resonated with what you said about starting small and just doing what already feels natural to you. And the idea of turning one conversation into multiple types of content is something that honestly a lot more people should be doing. And for example, like what we do with the podcast where we take an episode to create social clips, we'll create a trailer for the episode, and we even or I even write newsletters off of the episodes as well. So that's already three different types of content that we're getting just from the episodes that we have.
Kelsi Carter:And we also, like, do social posts as well.
Dave Charest:Yeah. That's the interesting thing. I think oftentimes, everything that we do in marketing these days feels disposable in many ways. Right? You post something and then it goes away.
Dave Charest:And then we've often seen a lot of success with coming back to things. Right? So maybe you might post something in the beginning of the year, maybe six months later, if something resonated well, you can repost that because the reality is not everybody sees that all at the same time, of course, right, because of whatever is going on from an algorithmic standpoint and all of those types of things. But, yeah, I think the big thing here is really finding that thing that where you feel comfortable. I even say that when it comes to picking a social channel.
Dave Charest:Traditional knowledge is gonna say, like, okay, well, where are your customers? Right? Like, yes, you wanna take that into account, but you also have to take into account where you're comfortable doing things. Right? And so, like, I'm not on TikTok because I'm not necessarily comfortable there.
Dave Charest:Right? I don't even have that app on my phone. Right? So, like, saying to me, you have to be on TikTok, like, yes, I might be missing something, but also, I'm heavily focused on LinkedIn. Right?
Dave Charest:And so that's where I'm kind of doing things. And so and then to your point, we're creating things that allow us to use those in different channels. We're learning those things and then understanding the nuances of the other channels in the future. Right? So we're learning those things.
Dave Charest:And so I think that's the big thing. Whether you're introverted or extroverted, it's really all about starting with what feels doable to you, and then just build from there. And so if you can find these non what's the word I'm looking for? Ways that don't make you feel like, oh, I can't do that or feel you make you feel uncomfortable. Again, a conversation with a friend, ask you questions about your area of expertise, and just have a conversation.
Dave Charest:Those are the types of things that play really well, particularly on social, and it's a good way you feel not attacked by being able to do that. Right? And then just be intentional about it. Think about what are the ways that you can then repurpose that and use that in different ways. And then of course, use constant contact.
Dave Charest:Use that as a way to get the information out, spread the word about what you're doing and the conversations that you're having, and just stay consistent even if that doesn't necessarily feel a % natural to you being outgoing in that ways. You just find those ways that work for you, and I think that's a a big thing to kinda take into account here. Next up, we go to Tatiana from Boston.
Tatiana Guerrero:Okay. So Tatiana Guerrero, I'm a director of Diamond Aesthetics Academy, and also we own medical spa in the North Shore area.
Dave Charest:Okay.
Tatiana Guerrero:And that's where we get Constant Contact.
Dave Charest:So you're using Constant Contact for the medical spa stuff?
Tatiana Guerrero:Med spa, yeah. Diamond Skin and Body Spa.
Dave Charest:Excellent. How long that's been around?
Tatiana Guerrero:Two years now.
Dave Charest:Two years. Congratulations.
Tatiana Guerrero:Thank you.
Dave Charest:First time with your own business or?
Tatiana Guerrero:No. So I've been managing this industry. I've been on it for over fifteen years now.
James Saunders:Okay, oh congratulations.
Tatiana Guerrero:I'm managing a few other spas, derm offices. Now this is like our first.
Dave Charest:So what's your question specifically?
Tatiana Guerrero:So we've been using it. You know, we've been sending we use, like, the same template that automatically creates, but it gets old. So we wanna know, like, how to make it, you know, a little different every We're sending two emails. So we're sending, like, around two emails a month. One is with a promotion, like I know you were saying that.
Tatiana Guerrero:And then the other one is more information about a specific service. But we haven't seen like much of an attraction. So most of our clientele is more like word-of-mouth, but we want to get more out there because what we offer, we offer too much.
Dave Charest:What is the size of your list, if you don't mind me asking?
Tatiana Guerrero:In my Centimeters, in my program, I have like 3,000.
Dave Charest:Okay. So that's great. And these are all like previous clients?
Tatiana Guerrero:Previous clients, regular clients. Yeah. Clients that have been to the spot, non new.
Dave Charest:Right. Okay. Got it. Good. So have you done any specific referral type of programs or things like that with those people to get the word out?
Dave Charest:Meaning, Hey, refer us to somebody and we'll give you a $10 coupon or something like that.
Tatiana Guerrero:No, no, not yet.
Dave Charest:So that might be something you wanna think about, right? Because I would say start there because it is word-of-mouth. How can you incentivize the folks that already know you provide a great service, Already know they do that. How can you get them kind of working for you a little bit, right? To get new people in.
Dave Charest:Then I would also say, what does the life cycle look like? Meaning like, what is the timeline, right? What are the different services that you offer? And when do I need to like, so for example, I'm making this up because I don't know exactly what you do, but right? Like I'll go and get a manicure or pedicure with my wife every once in a while, right?
Dave Charest:But how often should I really do that? When is the time for me to come in for another service? So you can start to think about this is where like automation can come in. And I mentioned like, if you were at the presentation, we talked about anniversary type of emails, right? So you could have a contact in there and you know they came in for X service on this date and they need to come in for another service on this date, you can actually just automate that email within Constanto.
Dave Charest:Exactly.
Tatiana Guerrero:And that's from the platform. So I think what it's lacking is probably are my staff.
Dave Charest:I have
Tatiana Guerrero:no idea how to do They just they know how to do like the email and send, and that's what they've been doing.
Dave Charest:So couple of things I'll mention to you, and I know it's oftentimes finding the time to do that, but we do do regular webinars all the time, and you can find information about that within your Constant Contact account. There's like a notification center. I mean, there's also a help panel. We'll do those all the time. Sometimes they're recorded as well too, so you can kind of get to it at your own time.
Dave Charest:But more specifically, I think what's great about Constant Contact, as a customer, you can pick up the phone and talk to someone. So if you've got, right, put it in your calendar, I got thirty minutes. I talked to Dave at the expo. We talked about, I wanna set up an anniversary email. They can walk you through what you need to do so you don't have to go figure out how to do it on your own.
Dave Charest:They can say, well, here's how you would do that. So then at least you know how to do it, and then it's just about then sending them. You may be even gonna get off the phone and have something like a draft that's close to ready to go. So I think I would take advantage of that, but I would start to think about how do you activate your existing customer base to bring you more business, And then how do you segment and maybe create lists of the people that are already your customers? Do you do any segmentation right now, meaning different types of services or different types of things?
Dave Charest:I would start thinking about that. That way you can be more specific with the information that you send to those groups. And then on top of that, thinking about where are the ways you could automate some type of thing that will spur someone and be like, yeah, need to set up an appointment and come back in again. Those would be the three things I'd prefer.
Kelsi Carter:Okay. Perfect. Activate the customers you already have. That stuck out to me because it's so easy to focus on getting new clients, but the people who already love what you're doing are usually the best at spreading the word. Meaning, most people's businesses is repeat business.
Kelsi Carter:So my question for you, Dave, is when you're thinking about setting up something like a referral email, how do you figure out what incentive actually motivates your audience?
Dave Charest:Yeah. That's a good question. But I think oftentimes, I think it's less about what motivates them. And in many instances, particularly for a small business, because you have those deeper relationships with your customers. And if you're treating them well and you're doing the things that you're delivering on the things, like, wanna help you.
Dave Charest:They wanna see you succeed in many instances. And so it's really just an opportunity to just to ask. Like, hey, I'm looking to get more business in. I've got some openings coming up for Tatiana's situation here. And so ask.
Dave Charest:Right? Like, hey, you enjoyed your service. I'd love to give you maybe a, you know, a ten $10 coupon if if somebody else comes in or or gets referred, but oftentimes people would just wanna do that. Like, oh, yeah. You know, we can definitely help you out here.
Dave Charest:And so if you don't ask, you don't get. Right? And so ask your existing customers for referrals. Some other things I'll kind of reiterate here. The conversation when we started really talked about this idea of like how to make something feel fresh, and I I wanna put out a word of caution here because oftentimes, we feel like things are old because we're thinking out about our business all the time, and we feel like, oh, we're just sending the same thing over and over again.
Dave Charest:And the reality is if we we we think of, one, not everybody's seeing it, that goes for social, that also goes for email. Right? Because not everyone is gonna open the email that's on your list. And so you wanna be careful not to be continually changing things so much that you kinda go too far off brand. Right?
Dave Charest:And then people don't recognize and people don't know who the email is from anymore. Right? And so this always happens where you're gonna feel like as the business owner, like, oh, people are so sick of me talking about this. Right? Because you're sick of talking about it.
Dave Charest:But I can't tell you how many times you feel like you're saying something and then you'll talk to somebody that you know is your customer or is following you or doing something and and you're like, hey, well, you know this thing that I've been talking about, and they're like, what now? Right? Like, they just don't even know. And so, again, don't go too far up when you're thinking about that. You know, we mentioned last time that idea of promotional and non promotional emails.
Dave Charest:I love that Tatiana was doing that. I think just stick with it. Right? Again, don't be afraid to ask for those referrals, but again, promotional, non promotional. If you're just always asking for something all of the time, you're gonna wear people out.
Dave Charest:So it's important to have a mix of those things so that you're building relationships for when people aren't ready to buy, but they're still gonna think of you first because they're not getting tired of you just saying, buy this, buy this, buy this, buy this all the time. Right? I think another thing, right, we talked about this idea of really timing. Right? Thinking about what is the right time to send something and and using automation and thinking about, like, when people need to come back.
Dave Charest:And so in our example here, if somebody comes in for a a manicure, let's say, right, like, does somebody need a manicure again? Right? So you can start using date based kind of automations to say, like, alright, a month from now, I'm making that up. I don't know how often you're supposed to do that. But hey, it might be time to come in again.
Dave Charest:You wanna schedule something. Right? Some of those little reminders can be all helpful. And even if you get, like, one, two, three people, that's one, two, three people that you didn't have by not doing it. Right?
Dave Charest:And so I think that's important to think about.
Kelsi Carter:But also don't be afraid too to, like, take it a little step further and, like, test a few different things. If you're noticing, like, just if it's not working right away, like, give it time. But if it's still not working, like, switch it up. Test a few different things out so you can actually see what's working for you because what's working for someone else may not apply to you.
Dave Charest:Right. Yeah. Exactly. I think it's always finding what your best practices are. Right?
Dave Charest:What are the things that are gonna work for your business and the intricacies of that as well as the customers that you're reaching. I also I thought it was a great reminder. Tatiana was a Constant Contact customer, of course, and really the reminder that, yes, we have free resources that you can use to help you with your marketing things. There's, you know, knowledge based articles that show you how to do specific things. But I think the big thing that people we hear time and time again love is that you can actually pick up the phone and talk to someone.
Dave Charest:And so I wanna reiterate that here that if you're maybe you don't have a lot of time to go down the rabbit hole of searching and figuring out things to do. But if you know what you wanna do, call up and tell people you're trying to do this thing, and our team will will walk you through that for sure. A simple way to get started too when you start thinking about segmentation is just think about the different services that you offer might be a way to do it. Right? Who are the people that purchase those services or have purchased those services and just put them in those buckets?
Dave Charest:That's one way to start to look at it. So again, a lot of good conversation there, a lot of things to kind of pick up on. Our next guest is Alice, and she is a freelance content and marketing consultant. And she's also starting her own thing in art licensing. And she had a question actually about starting a podcast.
Dave Charest:So let's check out that question.
Alice Sungurov:So your main recommendation though would be to start like a art licensing podcast?
Dave Charest:Get as close get as close to the people Yeah. In the industry as you can, whatever that means. Right? And I'm just offering that as an option as a way you may be able to do that in a non threatening way that isn't about you selling yourself because they're just gonna ignore you, mostly, unless you have an in. But this offers you a way to have conversations with people that, again, gets you closer to them so that it could become something in the future.
Alice Sungurov:And then for the general overarching business, if I was doing like for like social media stuff, where would would you suggest putting more time though than on the ecommerce side of that business just to build like some like
Dave Charest:Well, so that depends too. Right? Like Yeah. So that's so you have to start to weigh what does that look like? You might have to run some numbers.
Dave Charest:Like, what does that mean? So, like, if you so here we go with the goals. Right? What's your goal? What do you wanna do?
Dave Charest:Alright. End of the first year, I wanna make x amount of dollars. Right? So to do that, I could sell this, which means I have to move how many units, or I can do this side of the business. Right?
Dave Charest:You start doing some math and start figuring out what's feasible and then what you need to hit in order to do that. So all of that starts to direct you. Right? And so okay. Because, again, we're talking about two very different audiences.
Dave Charest:Right?
Alice Sungurov:Like That's that's kind of the
Dave Charest:main thing that I'm to consumer piece of it Yeah. Which would mean moving a lot of things versus the licensing thing, which might be making one relationship that is able to move a bunch of things. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I think you gotta do some business planning, I think, in that sense.
Dave Charest:And I would highly recommend also, there's lots of resources locally. Local chambers of commerce, for example, local score chapters that have people that have done all this stuff, that might be a place you wanna start.
Alice Sungurov:Oh, I'm sorry. I'm gonna write this down really quick.
Dave Charest:Yeah. Local chambers of commerce. Oh my god.
Alice Sungurov:I love my nails, but they're such a pain. For those of you who don't know, I'm wearing fruity nails.
Dave Charest:My daughter would love those actually.
Alice Sungurov:Good. Anyway, sorry. So you're saying it again?
Dave Charest:Yeah. Local chamber of commerce. They'll have free resources that you can take advantage of, and then even a local SCORE chapter. Local SCORE chapter. Yeah.
Dave Charest:So they might be able to connect you with somebody that's done or been in this industry Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That may be able to provide more
Kelsi Carter:information to
Dave Charest:you as well.
Alice Sungurov:Amazing. Alright. Awesome.
Dave Charest:Pleasure to meet you. Thank you.
Kelsi Carter:I love the idea of starting a podcast to build connections. It's just a smart way to open doors that might be harder to open otherwise. And you're not pitching, you're inviting a conversation, and that's the best part. You're not necessarily inviting them on the podcast just to get something out of it. You're starting it.
Kelsi Carter:You're inviting them on the podcast to build a connection, and that really is marketing at its best.
Dave Charest:Yeah. For sure. You know, it's really about getting closer to the people that are in your space that may be, you know, helpful to you in a natural kind of non I I just wanna sell you something kind of way. Right? Like, I mean, I think anybody on this call has probably got those LinkedIn messages or those people that have connected with you, and like, sometimes you see the job title that they have, and you're like, oh, this is gonna be a mistake.
Dave Charest:And so the minute you say yes, the first thing you get is like a message that's like, I wanna sell you something, like, right? And it's like, alright, calm down. So this is a a really, I think, a podcast. When you start thinking about the tools, one of the things we talk about in the presentation too is this idea that everybody has access to the same tools. It's just how you use them changes based on what it is that you're trying to do.
Dave Charest:And so get really clear on, like so we created this podcast for Constant Contact customers. Right? And so the metrics that we're looking at are a little bit different than if you traditionally started a podcast. You would might think that, oh, okay. We need to get a whole bunch of downloads because we wanna have more people to sell, you know, advertising against.
Dave Charest:Right? But we're not trying to do that. Right? We're really trying to how can we help more of our customers get value from this episode or this podcast as a whole. Right?
Dave Charest:And so I think similar here, starting a podcast in this scenario is really about finding a a low friction way to get people to potentially talk to you and build relationships with people that you might not have otherwise been able to do. And so I think it's a good vehicle to build those connections, grow in your own knowledge from the things that you're learning from people within that industry that you're trying to break into in many instances. And of course, promote that content to people that would use it, but then also, you know, make people aware of you that are still within that industry and, you know, promote yourself at the same time. And so the podcast, right, it might not be selling your work directly, but it could be the thing that really helps you land that next licensing deal or a key connection. And it's something that's really worth kind of digging into and thinking about and exploring.
Dave Charest:Some other things that I think we mentioned that are important to just reiterate, of course, is right. Do the math on your business. Think about where is that money coming from, and that's gonna help you set goals and really know which way to go and start spending your time. Again, we mentioned that idea of goals. Right?
Dave Charest:Marketing without the goals is really pointless in many levels. Right? Because you're not doing it for a reason. And oftentimes, particularly when you start thinking about social because that's often where people go first, it's about posting. Right?
Dave Charest:So all you're doing is posting. And then I'd like to get to this idea. If you actually start setting some goals behind it, now you're posting with purpose. There's a reason behind what you're doing, and that's gonna drive something more meaningful for you than just kinda going through the motions of that. And then, you know, the other thing that I mentioned that I think is often overlooked, and we talk a lot about this for businesses really just getting started and thinking about what it is that they should do is don't forget those local resources.
Dave Charest:Right? There's that term local again. Score chapters, the local chambers of commerce, for example. These are places that can offer real business support from planning, media marketing, whatever the case may be, and often for free, of course. And of course, Constant Contacts, as we've mentioned already, has tons of free marketing resources for you as well.
Dave Charest:Take advantage of those things because they're there for you. Alright? There's so much information out there. And that itself, I'll admit, can be overwhelming. And so I think it's about getting very clear on what it is that you wanna learn about, and then go to some place that you trust for that information, and then stick with that source.
Dave Charest:Because oftentimes, if you start introducing new voices into it, it can often then, like I mentioned, become overwhelming, and then you end up not taking action. And so you wanna just stick with something that you trust, and move on, and then do the things so then you can figure out what works best for you. Cool. Alright. Well, let's go to James as he talks about the challenge of keeping his list clean and finding ways to grow it again.
James Saunders:My name is James Saunders. I run eventandtravel.com as an event and travel company. Amazing. Great. I traveled wherever I wanna travel.
James Saunders:I just came back from South Africa Two Days ago. Amazing. You know? How long
Dave Charest:have been doing this?
James Saunders:I've been doing this over ten years, and I've been doing events over thirty years here, based in New York City. I'm a club promoter way back in the day, and I do every So since I grew up growing up, you know, crowd changes. And of course, I'm changing. Also, events every-
Dave Charest:That's an old thing, right?
James Saunders:So events every week don't happen every week. It happens maybe once a month, maybe three months or whatever for events. But at least travel happens ongoing. We all want to go somewhere, out of the space to be at. But doing constant contact, I guess, is just trying to, you know, change, you change over time, over the years.
James Saunders:And you have opportunity to, I guess, add more stock into your email, emailing, email marketing fees. I guess the challenge I had ran into was when you're not knowing the emails were not any good anymore and you realize that, Oh my goodness, you guys kind of got blocked in that situation. Kind of got you kind of get you off that when you had 5,099 or 3,000, how you can get it back up to 5,000 a So it was like, I guess there's one of kind of things you have to figure out, you know, in the process.
Dave Charest:Yeah. That's one of those things where, to your point, it's gotta become part of the process, right, where you're constantly, maybe every six months, taking a look at your contacts. And then some people like to It depends on your business, right? But some people like to If people haven't opened or clicked in the six months, they'll clean them out, right? Which is fine, right?
Dave Charest:We have an integration with a company called Kickbox.
James Saunders:Okay.
Dave Charest:And what they do is they actually validate email addresses. Oh, So let's say you had your list, you could connect that to your Constant Contact account, say, send this list to Kickbox, and they do their voodoo. I don't know what they do exactly, but they actually say, okay, these are your good email address still. Only send to these. Right?
Dave Charest:So then you can put that back into Cosmetic and have like a clean list. Right? Right. So it saves you the process of doing that manually. It's a
James Saunders:challenge because you get that it's all discouraging too when you when you do that whole thing. All of a sudden, you got all these things and go because you got blocked.
Dave Charest:I was like, okay.
Dave Charest:Well, thanks a lot. Yeah. That's just the nature of the game, though. Yeah. Yeah.
Dave Charest:I really like it.
James Saunders:But you learn that during the time. You don't know that right away.
Dave Charest:A couple things you can do, like, on the front end, right, is you can ask for their personal email address or and ask for a business address. Like, you wanna hopefully avoid people using, like, what we call role email addresses, like, with sales@businessname.Right?
James Saunders:Right. Right.
Dave Charest:Right. Because those
James Saunders:coming on. So you have that issue. And then people have Yahoo or Yahoo Hotmail and all the other kind of like
Dave Charest:I know. I know. You know, we do as much as we can on our side. We have very close relationships with those email service providers. It's kind of like an interesting thing.
Dave Charest:So we have actually somebody on our team at Consecutive. Their job is to go to meetings with these folks from our competitors as well, right? So the industry is able to survive and do better, right? So we usually find out, like, so for example, I don't know how familiar you are with like Google and Yahoo, but they just released regulations around what's called DMARC and all of that stuff. So we've done things on our side to make sure that our customers are in compliance with that.
Dave Charest:So that way those emails will still get through and they won't get dinged for like not being a good email address. Right? So it's like all these, like, little things that, you know, we laugh, we take for granted how easy it is to send an email, but there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes, right, to, like, make sure of that. I mean, we also do things just to make sure nefarious actors aren't coming in and using the platform. So we use a lot of AI on our side just to recognize those patterns, to stop those things before they So your email makes sure it gets Right?
Dave Charest:So, I mean, that all said, I mean, we still have a pretty good deliverability rate at Constant Contact in terms of 97% getting to the inbox. But, yeah, to your point, it's it's kind of a it can be a very manual process. Or if you use a thing like TikTok, for example, it'll help you get to the goods within that email list a lot faster.
Kelsi Carter:Cleaning up your email list is one of those things that sounds pretty simple but can be weirdly overwhelming. Like, do I just delete people? Do I reach out to them again? Do I start over? So James said something pretty relatable about how discouraging it can feel to go, say, from 5,000 contacts to, like, 3,000 overnight.
Kelsi Carter:But honestly, keeping a clean list is what makes everything else work better.
Dave Charest:Yeah. It's just the nature of the game in many instances. Right? There's turnover. Right?
Dave Charest:People move, people move jobs, people aren't in the market for what you have anymore. Right? Like, it's just all of these things that just happen naturally, which is why we're always so focused on keeping people growing their list because you're gonna have to replace, you know, the people that leave and and do all of that. But I think, to your point, really, it's about a smaller, more engaged list is always gonna outperform a a bigger one. And I think that's, you know, a bigger one that's either outdated or unresponsive and all of those types of things.
Dave Charest:And so that's why it's really important to focus on the on the quality of the list versus just the quantity of the list in those. And and I think, as we mentioned here, I mean, we just had our our episode with Jennifer from Kickbox, right? Tools like Kickbox, they connect with Constant Contact and can help you make sure and validate those addresses so that you have good people on your list, and then you can use segmentation and automation from Constant Contact, of course, to just all of those things can really start to make a difference on the responsiveness of that list. And and the more you can have people responding and opening and clicking and and responding to you, right, just replies, all of those things are sending great signals to the inbox provider. And in the future, that helps you to make sure that more of your emails get to the people that should be getting them.
Dave Charest:Couple other things to just really remember, like, to really to your point, it can feel a little overwhelming, and the list isn't gonna clean itself. Right? And so you really just gotta think about adding that maintenance stuff as part of your processes. And so maybe every few months or maybe you say, like, every quarter or every six months, whatever it is, but put it in there. Right?
Dave Charest:So at least you're staying on top of that and paying attention to what's happening there. Because again, the things that you pay attention to will get more attention, of course, right, but allow you to kinda grow those things in a better way. Use a tool like Kickbox to validate those contacts and so you can avoid some of those deliverability things. And then, again, focus on the quality, not just the size. Even a small engaged audience can really start to drive real results for your business depending on the price of your product and all of those types of things.
Dave Charest:So it's not always a numbers game. And so just, you know, take advantage of those things in the in the best ways you can. Next up, we talk with Rob, Rob is in New York City.
Rob Hebron:We are commercial real estate brokers. The business is two people. It's me and my dad. Founded by my grandfather around thirty years ago. Also Robert, Robert, Robert.
Rob Hebron:So we do office leasing in a very small market. I joined Constant Contact about a month and a half, two months ago. Has been great. I think Germani has been has been the one helping me. Reaches out by text.
Rob Hebron:I jump on the fifteen minute sessions every week. So my questions are, and I had one I asked Kelsey, which is how about X integration or Twitter integration for the social channel? Yeah. And secondary in that vein is you had mentioned that the content should be tailored to each platform, which is great. So what I've been doing, unfortunately, is like I write one post and hit go, and it goes to my Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram.
Rob Hebron:Do you see an AI tool coming that will tailor it for each platform, or should I be doing that myself?
Dave Charest:And so I well, it's I think it's a little bit of both. Right? So I think well, I don't have you been using any of the AI features within Constant Contact? I don't believe so. No.
Dave Charest:So you might wanna start there.
Rob Hebron:Okay.
Dave Charest:Are you using ChatGPT or
Rob Hebron:anything like Oh, why?
Dave Charest:Yeah. Okay. So you might find that that because that knows you a little bit better. I mean, I think you're right. Your usage.
Dave Charest:Right? It depends on how much you've been doing someplace. So then so for example, like, I'll do that. So I mentioned my primary channel is LinkedIn. And so I will often take so just take for example here.
Dave Charest:I'm recording this conversation. We're gonna put this into a podcast episode. I'm recording my answer to you with video that I will then transcribe. I'll use this on my LinkedIn profile. Right?
Dave Charest:But then I'll feed that to Chat GPT. And then if this works well, I'll say like, alright. Here's what I said. Can you help me?
Dave Charest:And I've gone in. Right? I built my own GPT. I said, you know, make sure you're writing in my style Yep. Except for the expletives, you know, and make sure you you know me so it doesn't so it sounds like Rob. Right? You know, the personality not
Rob Hebron:Yeah. And then I had another question if that's okay.
Dave Charest:Yeah. Please.
Rob Hebron:You're a busy guy, and I wrote them down. That was excellent, by the way.
Dave Charest:Thank you. I appreciate that.
Rob Hebron:So one of my questions is I see the heat maps, and I see at the bottom of my web page for my metrics, like, this is the link that gets clicked the most. Yep. Is that what you're talking about, the links, or is there a different section?
Dave Charest:So there's, yeah, there's a couple of things. So in in constant context specifically, it shows you the heat map of, like, where people click on the links. Right? So, yes, that's specific to the link. Right?
Dave Charest:So that'll give you an idea of even if you use the same link multiple times in an email, you get a sense of, like, where that is happening. Right? But, yeah, that's what I'm talking about there. You can obviously do that on your website as well with your credentials.
Rob Hebron:I have like 10 or 12, and I see that but I always see the top three is the same, which is this real estate designation I have, and people always go see what that is. So that's interesting. And lastly, I appreciate that. And by the way, thank you. The last one is so I'm a commercial real estate broker.
Rob Hebron:It's not like a cup of coffee. It's not garlic knots. What I do have is models that I've written to analyze your lease to compare. Do you sell? Do you buy?
Rob Hebron:What do I use as the token? What do I use as you get this for your information since I do a a service, not a product?
Dave Charest:Right. So, well, I would be curious as to what you could use from that because I love that you've got some, like, analysis. Right? So maybe it's like a report that you put together, like the 2025 commercial real estate market, what's happening right now.
Rob Hebron:I have those for free. Right. That's what I mean.
Dave Charest:So, like, it might be just, like, pumping that up a bit. Right? And if that's something that the folks are really interested in. Right? Like, I don't know.
Dave Charest:I'm not in that industry. Right? So I don't know what would be great. But if you can have something like that, it doesn't have to be a big thing either. It could just be something that like, oh, yeah.
Dave Charest:I wanna know that. That's something that you offer to Ken.
Rob Hebron:And lastly is I have a customer called, you know, Gregory's Coffee. Do you know them? Yeah.
Dave Charest:Well, they they're a bunch of around here.
Rob Hebron:Yeah. So I opened one of his first locations with him in Brooklyn. What do you think about a partnership with him where I say, look, I wanna offer your coffee for free on my website. I'll pay you 50¢ on the dollar for each cup that's bought. Yeah.
Rob Hebron:I mean, would it make sense to have a physical token for giving me their information, or should I stay in my lane and not Intervalve coffee?
Dave Charest:I think you'd have to think through more about, like, how that would play out. Like, I don't know if that's, like, the thing for, like, here's a free but maybe. Right? I I could be wrong, but I think you have to really think through what's the execution of that really look like and what does that transpire into. Otherwise, just giving away free coffee.
Dave Charest:No. I'm trying to sue what I Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Rob Hebron:What I do is my token. Alright. Yeah. I'm good. Cool.
Rob Hebron:I really appreciate you, man. Thank you so Congratulations.
Kelsi Carter:Okay. That was a really good one. I liked when you brought up how you're using AI but still trying to keep your personality in your content because it's really easy for things to just sound robotic, especially if you're using AI. So I love that you're telling ChatGPT to sound like you, the person, like the person that's writing. But how do you know if it's hitting the right tone?
Dave Charest:Well, that's an interesting question. So I think there's a couple of things. Right? I mean, you obviously want it to be again, when we're about this idea of sounding like you, and so you wanna be involved in the process. Right?
Dave Charest:Just because it creates something, you don't wanna just use that. You wanna look at it and be like, alright, would I say that? Probably not. So you're gonna change that. Right?
Dave Charest:You're gonna take that out. That's one thing. I think the other thing is you start to know if you're hitting the right tone when people start responding. Right? So they're not just engaging with likes or clicks.
Dave Charest:Like, those are, like, some of the simple things that you could do. But if they're actually, like, replying and commenting or reaching out based on something that you've published, you know you're onto something. And so this is a a constant cycle of publishing something and finding out what people are resonating, and then what topics or what themes are resonating with people, and then really doubling down on those, right, and doing those. But it starts to feel more natural, of course, as you write and impose because you're using you, right, as the kind of the the backbone for this. And so you can also think about when people start kind of repeating things back to you or referencing something that you said, I think that shows that the things that you're doing are kind of sticking.
Dave Charest:I mean, then when you start to put that content, of course, into emails and even managing on your social channel, right constant contact, the reporting can kind of help you with seeing some of those things there. So you look at your open rates, your click throughs, and and your replies to really start to see what's landing. And then it's like I said, really pay attention to those messages where people are maybe responding a little bit more. That's a good tone or good sign that that tone is resonating, and then you can really start to expand on maybe that particular topic a little bit more because every topic is like can go you can go really deep into a topic in ways that are above just that surface level or deeper than that surface level. Right?
Dave Charest:I think what's interesting too is we mentioned that idea that every platform is a little bit different. You can start thinking about ways to use AI to help you think about tailoring the content for different platforms, for example. But again, make sure that it includes your voice and your point of view, your perspective, because that's what's gonna make it unique. We don't need more generalized kind of information out there, right, that anybody can get from ChatGPT, for example, because then where is the expertise in the element, right, of it? So you need to think through that.
Dave Charest:But again, if you can even lean into Constant Contacts built in tools like scheduling, you've got click, you know, the heat maps for clicks, the campaign reporting, again, can help you start seeing what's resonating. And then when you start thinking about, right, offering something in exchange for the contact info, of course, Rob talked a lot about that idea of, you know, what is the thing that he can offer? What's the token? That's often really just thinking what's something relevant to that audience that you're trying to reach and that intersection between your expertise. Right?
Dave Charest:I like to think of like a little guide or a checklist even. Something like that that allows people to get some immediate benefit from it, but also gets them to see how you think and how it might be like to work with you. So those are some things I'd start to think through there. Kelsey, we have made it to our final guest for today.
Kelsi Carter:Traveling back to I know. Boston in
Dave Charest:the week. I'm a little I'm jet lagged or something. I don't know. But I wanna go to Martha as she shares her perspective on, well, helping small businesses see the value of market research and why that really matters, but also some things that were really kinda shifted her thinking on a couple of other things too. So let's go to Martha.
Martha Hayward:My company is Bird Dog Insights. We are a market research company. So we help companies understand are their customers and what do they care about. So you might use the market research if you're developing a new product, if you're looking for a new customer segment, if you're maybe trying to revise something in your company. So it's often very early in a marketing funnel.
Dave Charest:Got it. So this seems like this will be very meta because obviously, to do the market research for businesses, you also have to find the businesses that are interested in market research. Right? True. Right.
Dave Charest:So is there a particular industry that you work with? And how long have you been in business?
Martha Hayward:I've been doing this for seven years.
Dave Charest:Seven years. Okay. Congratulations to you.
Martha Hayward:Thank you.
Dave Charest:That's a good where you think most fail in five years. Congratulations. Yeah. Love that.
Martha Hayward:Most of my clients are larger Fortune 500 type of customers. So they're the ones that are often investing in market research, but I feel like small business should be thinking about it more.
Dave Charest:Right. Okay. So are you looking to shift to the small business market, or are you or are you still just trying to figure out, like, how to find more people within the the Fortune 500 companies?
Martha Hayward:I would say where budgets are, larger companies are more likely to have a research budget. So I understand that part of the market. The small business that wants to grow at some point needs to start investing in customer understanding. So yeah. So it's sort of a question of of where are people on that cusp that are interested in exploring that further.
Dave Charest:So talk to me. Have you explored because I think something that we've seen and we were actually just talking to someone who was an IP attorney the other day, and I loved what he was doing. But he was doing Well, obviously working with clients in the professional sense of being their lawyer, right? When they needed help with the IP related stuff. But on the side of that, he was also setting up courses and like education for the folks that they have a group, right?
Dave Charest:Where these are the businesses that may not have the money to pay you, but can pay for the I'm making up numbers, right? But can pay for the $50 to get access to something that will teach them something on how to do something so that when they get to that level, well then, who are they gonna come to? They're gonna come to you because you've already built that trust. You've already they already know what you can do for them based on what so have you considered anything like that maybe with your business?
Martha Hayward:Yeah. I haven't. Like you said in your talk, it was a lot things we could be doing. We have to choose choose and prioritize. Yeah.
Martha Hayward:And as a a business of one, there's always competing priorities. So I haven't put a lot of thought into it, but it's a good idea.
Kelsi Carter:I really love that her question brings things full circle because to grow your business, you have to know your audience. To reach more customers, in a new audience, you have to understand what they need and how they make decisions. I also liked your idea about creating educational content for that audience because even something small could help them introduce them to the value of research and bring them one step closer to working with you.
Dave Charest:Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, again, as we have these conversations and if you've been listening for a while, you know, the idea is that the customer really should be at the center of everything that you do. And the more you can tap into what you know about them to connect and to serve them, the stronger your business is gonna be. That's just the equation there. Right?
Dave Charest:And so I actually wanted to end with this one because I think it offered also another way of thinking about serving your audience that really, depending on the nature of the business, may not be able to even afford your services at a particular moment, but you can create lower cost ways for them to again, this idea of courses or guides and those types of things that allows them to grow, allows you to generate some revenue from that, but then you're the person they're kind of growing with, right, which as their business grows, eventually points them to you because you've earned their trust through those other processes and the other things that you've created to get them to come do business with you when they can afford it. And so I think that's just another way to start to look at that and go through those ideas. Alright, Kelsey. We did it. That's everybody, I think.
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Kelsi Carter:We did it. We wrapped it up in a nice little bow.
Dave Charest:Alright. I like it. I can't wait to see the package.
Kelsi Carter:Yeah. That was honestly a really great way to wrap things up because, honestly, we heard from a lot of small business owners and entrepreneurs today that are at various stages in different industries, but they're asking thoughtful questions, and that honestly just shows how much heart and hustle go into running your own thing.
Dave Charest:Yeah. I mean, it was a lot of fun having these conversations. As we mentioned at the beginning, we covered everything from list building and deliverability to introvert friendly marketing strategies, AI, and even how to find your audience and test ideas with them. Right? And so no matter where you are in your journey, I think the same ideas keep showing up.
Dave Charest:You've heard a lot of things like knowing your audience, being consistent, using and taking advantage of tools like Constant Contact that really make it easier for you to create the content that you're gonna need, to share your message with the people that need to hear it, and really manage those leads and contacts so you can move people down and bring them closer to you you can get more business and start to grow in the ways that you really need to. So friend, as always, I I hope you found one thing here in this episode that you can take some action on. And if you do, please do let us know. We'd love to hear from you, of course. As always, thanks for joining us.
Dave Charest:Happy National Small Business Month at this point, we'll call it. But, we'll see you next time.
Kelsi Carter:See you next time. And thank you to everyone who stopped at the booth, by the way.
Dave Charest:We appreciate it.
Dave Charest:Yes. We sure do. Alright. Talk to you next time. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be a Marketer podcast.
Dave Charest:Please take a moment to leave us a review. Just go to ratethispodcast.com/bam. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. That's ratethispodcast.com/bam. Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.