From posts to profits: How small businesses can turn social media into a growth engine

Join us for the first ever episode of The Small Biz Fix. Inside Small Business's editor Mia Lockett talks to Madelene Ragno, Founder, Made Creative Co. to pick her brain on the do's and don'ts of social media for small business. Then, she is joined by Phil Kuoch, CEO of viral doughnut sensation Goldelucks, to discuss his business' social media success. 

For the latest small-business news and more actionable advice, visit the Inside Small Business website

You can also find Madelene Ragno here and Philip Kuoch here

Transcript

Mia:

The Small Biz Fix is your one-stop shop for actionable advice. Get insights from industry experts and real small business owners who've been there, done that, and can show you how to thrive. Tune in and learn how to launch, run, and grow your business the smart way.

So we're kicking off the series with a topic that no business owner can get away from right now, and that's social media. It's been, I feel, quite a hot topic so far in 2025, and it's just gotten more chaotic and confusing than ever, really. I feel like understanding how to use these platforms to actually grow your business is a bit like trying to hit a moving target, right? So how do you cut through all the noise and actually use social media to your advantage?

On this episode of Small Biz Fix, we've invited marketing expert Maddie Ragno onto the show. She's going to break down the biggest mistakes that small businesses make on social media and also show us how to prioritize and make it work for us and not the other way around. Later on, we're also going to hear from a small business owner who will share his own social media journey. He's going to go through what's worked, what hasn't, and what he'd recommend to those in the same place. To kick us off though, welcome Maddie.

Maddie:

Thank you for having me, I’m excited.

Mia:

Now Maddie, you talk to small businesses every day. You're a small business owner yourself. You run your own small marketing business and you know how hard it can be to untangle the world of social media and really use it as an effective marketing tool. I'd love to know first off where you think most small business owners are going wrong with social media.

Maddie:

I think the biggest thing that businesses are doing wrong is really not understanding where social media fits into their marketing funnel. And I think that's because of how things have changed now with consumers needing more touch points with brands, consumers going onto different platforms to find information, know, UGC creators you've got now, influencers. So people are not just seeing a social media post like they used to back in 2018 or 2017 and making that sale, they're wanting more touch points. 

So I think as business owners, sometimes we forget that we have to go just beyond maybe the one platform or we have to really understand, okay, my Instagram, what is the actual purpose of, firstly the Instagram account, but also this piece of content? Like, is it helping people understand about our culture? Is it helping people understand the product and the comparison? Is it just helping people who already have bought from us before and feel a sense of community and wanting to be part of our business further. So that's probably the biggest issue I'm seeing with brands right now is being like, okay, what is the point of actually being on these platforms? And what am I hoping to achieve from it as well?

Mia:

Yeah, really interesting. So I'm sure there are some listeners who are sitting there now thinking, that's me, I don't really understand what this is doing for me. So if you were to really dive in and give some practical advice, what advice do you have in terms of identifying what social channels would be right for an individual business?

Maddie:

And this is probably business problem 101 wrong that people do is actually formulating a strategy and like sitting down. And the great thing is now we have so many great AI tools that you can sit down to and have a conversation with around, okay, my target audience, what are their main pain points? You know, what are the transformations that they're hoping to achieve? What are their buying habits? How do they like to be spoken to? Where do they like to be spoken to and actually map out this customer journey from someone not knowing that they have a problem, to then knowing that they have a problem, to then knowing your product and then to making a purchase and mapping out, which platform makes sense for the target audience, which is demographics, their potential location, gender as well, their interests as well, which one makes sense to be on because of this target audience and also which stage of the funnel am I going to use this platform on to move those consumers down the touch points.

Mia:

Mm, okay.

Maddie:

Map it out would be my first thing. Rather than just jumping on a platform, I think we get shiny object syndrome as business owners, as human beings. We always want to jump on the new thing and then we get on there and we don't really have a plan of why we're on there. So we freeze and because we freeze, we're like, well, this platform doesn't work for me. But really we haven't gone in with a plan on how to use it.

Mia:

There's so many different social media platforms obviously, what are the pros and cons of being across all of them versus just a few?

Maddie:

Well, the pros I guess are that you have more chance of being found. That would be the obvious one. Like the more platforms you are, the more chances of people seeing you, which is great. And again, we know that consumers jump across different platforms. So, you know, as a consumer myself, I know I go from seeing a website or seeing an ad and then I'll go to Instagram, then I'll go on TikTok and then I'll see an influencer where it's so being on all these platforms allows you to have those touch points as we mentioned. And I think that's a great thing. 

Like, I think there is more chance of you growing quicker. I think the downfall of that is that you never become a master of a platform and then you end up putting out a lot of crap content and nothing that's actually really good. So it's a tricky one. I do say to people, try and at least master one where you feel pretty confident before adding a second one. But if you're happy to dabble in a couple, just, guess, formulate that plan and maybe really, really have a great organisational tactic that allows you to post on multiple platforms. Because it's overwhelming for sure.

Mia:

And I really want to get into that with you later. How you keep up with all this content. But first I'd love to know from your perspective what platforms work well for different stages of that marketing funnel for different purposes?

Maddie:

Yeah. So we know that TikTok's algorithm is the most powerful algorithm, I guess any social media giant has brought out. And the way that that algorithm works is it puts you on a level playing field with big brands. So it doesn't matter about your following. Doesn't matter how many likes you've received in the past or anything like that. Every single post that goes out is on a level playing field. So it is a great platform to be found on because again, like mentioned, you're in the same league as everybody.

The way the algorithm works is based on intent of what people have been searching for. So if someone is searching for bathers and you're a bather brand, you will come up potentially, even if you don't have any followers, even if you've not done a post before. So that's a really cool thing about TikTok is if you are a small business, it is a great one to start on because you have that opportunity. Again, does it make sense though for your business? The second one obviously would be Instagram. And that does have a lot of capabilities of being found.

It is harder for sure. We're treating Instagram as a top of funnel, but a top and middle. We find that a lot of our business owners that we work with, if they're using TikTok, people generally find them quicker there, but they'll go to Instagram to almost view like a mini website. So think, your really aesthetic, beautiful pictures, maybe like results that you've gotten, your before and afters. If you're a business, it may be where you show more of the culture and all that sort of more prettier proof content happens more on that platform. So it's still a top, but I'm seeing it more as a top and a middle. And that would be like, if we were going to YouTube, for example, or LinkedIn, their algorithms work slightly different. Again, YouTube is all around SEO keywords. So, you know, for you to pop up in that algorithm, you have to be really strategic with keyword research. So you'd need to have tools around that and ensuring that, yeah, your title and everything that you're talking about in the video matches search intent for those consumers as well.

And LinkedIn is one I'm still even grasping. It's not my favorite platform or the one I'm a pro at, but LinkedIn's algorithm again can push you out, but it is based on engagement strategies as well. And people commenting and liking that boost you out more to a bigger audience. So LinkedIn can be a top of funnel, but I would say that's definitely more middle and bottom where you can show more of your expertise and proof and authority on that platform where you would drive more of the conversion straight to someone booking a call with you if you are a service provider. 

So I would say TikTok, Instagram top, YouTube top as well. YouTube can be a bit middle because you can show your authority of course on there, you can show your expertise. Instagram definitely middle and bottom and LinkedIn I would say probably more middle and bottom as well.

Mia:

So it really depends on what you want for your business in terms of which one you're going to use. So if you want to be discovered for the first time as a small business owner, you're going to go for TikTok, et cetera. However, if you want to really, if you're closer to this point of sale, you really want to get on LinkedIn.

Maddie:

And it really matters on your niche as well. But I challenge that a little bit because a lot of people said to me, you because I have a big TikTok following. What is that really going to do for your business? Like, you know, big brands aren't on there. And I'm like, well, they are the founders are on there. They have TikTok pages for their businesses, which they're on all the time. And be like founders these days that are pretty big businesses that they're still in their 30s or early 40s, some of them, or even some of them in their 20s that we work with. So they're on TikTok. So you can still be in that service niche and show educational authority, culture, personality, and find leads on TikTok as well.

Mia:

So next big challenge for social, sorry, with social media, next big challenge would be content creation for many small business owners. So what are some maybe golden nuggets of wisdom when it comes to content creation?

Maddie:

I think the biggest thing would be to really understand that we're in an era of ‘authentic’. So authentic means we're not in an era of ‘aesthetic’ anymore, which is fantastic. This means that it's super easy for business owners. So when you think about your content, I think business owners get really caught up in this because they're like, everything has to be on brand, everything has to be beautiful. Oh, this needs to be edited like this. But the great thing is we're in this era of like, being human and being authentic, that less editing, just filming your everyday, filming like you're talking to your friend and picking up the phone is on trend right now. 

So this is the, like you really have no excuse as a business owner to not be filming your everyday. Like some days I just put my camera up and I just film myself on my computer. Like this is a great thing about this content right now is it's so easy to do. So I would say film your everyday, film moments that are happening, film conversations you're having on the phone, film your team meetings, and then have a bank of that content that you could chop up into voiceover later or you could chop up to a day in my life or behind the scenes. You can chop that up into so many different things, which is really great. So I think we're in an era right now where there's no excuse because ‘aesthetic’ is out the window. So if you think you're bad at content, you're probably actually really good at content right now. 

Yeah, the next thing would be really thinking about how you can take one topic and demonstrate it in multiple ways. This is another thing I see business owners get caught up in is every idea across every platform has to be a fresh idea and it doesn't. Pretty much I think I've said this multiple times that people are goldfish, like they'll forget something once they read it or see it they're not gonna remember. So repeating yourself and repurposing your content into different formats or different ways of presenting it, is totally fine. So if you're a big believer, one of our big pillars of what our content is, is the importance of strategy. I literally talk about that almost every single day on my platforms. I'm just saying it in a different way or presenting it in a different way. So write out your core pillars and just think about ways that you can demonstrate those in different matters. And if a piece of content does well, don't be scared to just keep doing it again and again and again, because the person that saw the first piece probably won't see the second or third anyway. So, just simplify it, simplify the editing, simplify the filming and simplify the content pillars. You don't need 100 of them. You can just have four core ones that you believe in and then you keep repeating and you'll end up being known for those easier because people keep hearing you say the same thing over and over again as well.

Mia:

Could you define what you mean by content pillars for us quickly?

Maddie:

Yeah, so I guess they're buckets. I think that would be another thing, like buckets of things that either you believe in or things that your business stands for or maybe potential topics like I'm in marketing. Like I said to you, like one of my buckets is like the importance of having a strategy before you do any marketing. So, you know, I could talk about showing my behind the scenes of a marketing strategy, showing my results of my marketing strategy, showing how I build it, showing like clients before they came with us the bad results that they were maybe getting because they didn't have a strategy. 

Then you might have a bucket on like a ‘day in the life’, you know, of a corporate person doing X, Y, Z. Or you might have, if you're a clothing brand, like come get ready with me videos, know, aspirational style buckets where women are like trying on different clothing. And that becomes like a bucket that you keep repeating again and again. So since you just like bucketing your like ideas and beliefs and values into categories that you just keep repeating again and again.

Mia:

So we've talked about figuring out what social actually means for your business, what it does. Then we've talked about content creation. For me, the most obvious next step is actually analysing your social media posts or your content and then making changes based on these results. So how important is this and what's the best way to go about it?

Maddie:

So important. So a lot of the consulting clients, what I'll make them do is when we have our mapping out for the month, they'll like, plan all their content. And then I have, it's really manual right now, but I'll make them go through at the end of the month and write, okay, what was the outcome of this post? And this is the other thing businesses get a bit freaked out about. I didn't get likes or I didn't get comments or you've got to remember that there should only be one action that you're measuring for that post. So is that post something that you want people to share?

Or is it a post that you want people to go to your website? Think about the last time you as a consumer saw a post and you liked, commented, shared, saved, visited the website. People are only ever gonna take a one action measurement. So that's really what we should be reporting on. So what I'll get my clients to do is be like, okay, what was the point of this post? Was it to get saves because it was a really pretty piece of clothing on a woman and we really wanted people to save this and wanna recreate it later? Or was it something that we wanted people to tag a friend on there?

And measure, did that outcome actually happen? And if so, what happened in that piece of post that we believe made that happen? Was it the hook? Was it potentially the pillar that we were talking about? And the more you keep doing it, the more you'll start seeing the trends in those outcomes that you're seeing. So I think it can be quite manual, and I think that's a good thing. I think if you use tools sometimes, and this is across all marketing, if you use tools, sometimes you actually don't think, because you're not inputting the data.

You're just looking at data, but you're not yourself going, oh, okay, I'm putting 33 in there. Okay, why was that 33? You know, it makes you think more when you actually are more manual. So I'm a big believer in manual data inputting. And then I have another suggestion that if you are a small to medium sized business, but maybe more on the medium size and you do have a lot of touch points, maybe you're using email, maybe you're using TikTok, Instagram, you may want to look at investing in an attribution tool that can like,pinpoint those customer journeys for you so you can actually see the value of that platform. I mean those tools are quite pricey. You're looking at a thousand dollars minimum to a few thousand dollars depending on the size of your business but sometimes it is worth having that real clarity in your business.

Mia:

Yeah, really interesting. And leading on from that, what are your favorite tools and technologies right now that you think are really changing the game for small businesses? Now, this could be, once again, those tools you were just talking about or anything else in the tech space that you think is helping people with their social media marketing.

Maddie:

I think just AI in general, like I just got my hands on a new AI. So I think ChatGPT definitely has its place, but I just got my hands on this new tool called Poppy AI, which is its next level, like so cool. It's a visual AI. So you can link TikTok videos to it, Instagram videos, YouTube, like anything that you're drawn inspiration from. You can do voice memos to it, documents, and it can become like your second brain or if you train it, it can become an expert that maybe you've linked the videos to.

And these like AIs can obviously help you come up with ideas. Now we were just having this conversation at lunch today with the girls. A good business owner, a good marketer, they don't just take that first AI response, they really work with the AI and fleshing it out. So I think these AI tools are fantastic at helping you find your answer, but it shouldn't be the AI's answer. You need to work with the AI. But they're really great at helping you come up with ideas, organising your ideas.

If you have your pillars, it can help you, you know, come up with some different types of ways of presenting it. So anything AI I'm super, super for, and I think they're really great. And I think now you've got AI tools that can help you create product imagery and help you with video editing and stock imagery, stock video, anything like that. As a business owner, you should have a suite full of AI tools that can help you. But I think we've got heaps of tools out there that can help you do customer research like I use similar web and that is the greatest tool for finding out what is trending now, like what are people searching for right now in this moment in the last few months and what are some keywords or key comments that people are starting to search and the search intent is increasing. So you can pop in keywords and it gives you suggestions and shows the different trends that are going up and down as well, which I think is super important. And then I just found this other tool and I actually don't know how to pronounce it, so apologies.

I think it's G-A-G-G-I-A and it scours the web for all Reddit threads. And we've been using this lately where you can type in specific keywords or anything that you wanna know and it will go through all Reddit and find the keywords or what are people searching for, gives you ideas on what to create content on, because these are questions that your consumers actually are asking in Reddit. And then you've got Answer the Public. That's a great one. That's free as well for a first few searches, because that tells you again what people are searching for. You can create content on it.

Maddie:

There's so many tools that can just give you the answers without you having to really do much thinking as well.

Mia:

Thank you. Those are some gems and I've not heard of most of those. Yeah. Do you use those on a regular basis with your clients? Yeah, great.

Maddie:

Yeah, 100%. Like those four like would be hands down the things I'm using like on a daily basis. The Poppy AI like, next level. Yeah.

Mia:

Yeah, that's so interesting. And I know we've talked a little bit just then about content trends, which obviously forever changing. We've talked a little bit about some tools you might use to keep up with them, but I'd love to know how important it is to keep up with social trends if you're going to be doing social media marketing.

Maddie:

I think the first thing is marketing is a big game of copycat, like the whole marketing. There's no really a new idea. Like, I think everything is somewhat being done in a way. We know that fashion comes back. So there's nothing really new anymore.

I think the new idea is being authentic because people can't copy you. So I think being human is the trend and being your own is a trend. And I know that's not really like a very clear cut answer, but I think people can't copy you. Like no one can be Maddie, essentially. Like I remember when I started first on TikTok going, hey, Maddie, tell us this is, and then people used to say like, people are copying you and doing it. I'm like, they can copy me, but they're not Maddie. Like it's not me, it's not actually going to work for them. It works not because I say, hey Maddie, it's because how I present myself and you know, it's me so they can copy my idea. 

But at the end of the day, people buy from people. And we saw this especially when Brittany Saunders like she brings out really cut throat and like trend setting ways of doing videos. But none of her ideas are really new ideas if you actually look at them. But it's her that is really authentic and people are trying to copy her ideas, but they never work out as well as she does them. 

So I think being human is the trend and having your why and that really being portrayed through your content is the trend. So yes, you can go doom scrolling and looking like that's what I do, know, go on TikTok or go on Instagram, see what's out there. And I look outside my niche as well, like what are other brands doing or other niches doing that I can maybe get inspo from. But then I try and bring it into my own way with my values and my own authentic self.

Mia:

So some gems here. I guess lastly, I wanted to discuss with you kind of the chaos that is social media right now. We've all heard about TikTok in the US, blue sky, there's Threads, Little Red Book. What are you seeing in terms of engagement right now? You know, what's the most popular? Where are you spending a lot of time and investing your?

Maddie:

I'm going to save my own business because I think it will be interesting. And I know a lot of service providers I talk to are finding the same. When I do at the end of the month, like, you know, where do my leads come from? Where am I seeing things? It's a lot from long form content and it's actually from podcasting. And I know that's actually not a social media channel as such. but I've, people in my kind of marketing world are seeing the same, like their podcast is the one that brings in obviously a lot of their leads. 

And I think if I reflect back on that, people really love long form and especially if you're a high ticket business owner, so the service providers or maybe your e-com and you have a high price point, people are looking for that long form content. So I think you need to invest in that and it doesn't have to be a podcast, but I would say YouTube may be your next one and I know YouTube is coming back this year and I can already see that. I think that's a smart one to invest in and I would double play that with YouTube and podcasting. Like I would just make a YouTube and podcast like channel at the same time. But yeah, I think people are still wanting if you're in that high ticket bracket, long form content to build trust and authority. So I think that would be where I would go. And then LinkedIn, I think is for those service providers coming back into popularity a little bit with millennials and even Gen Z as well.

And again, that comes with, we're seeing a lot of people doing long form content, but also long form video content and giving away swipe files and real educational content happening on that channel. But then I think if you're e-commerce, you would be silly not to be on TikTok. like, it's just so powerful, like I said, of you being found. And with e-com being such a saturated kind of industry, especially if you're in a like skincare or fashion or beauty, it's really hard to cut through there.

That you'd be silly not to try a platform that focuses on you being found. So that would be where I would put my eggs in. So really I'm doing everything. But again, I'm at a level of like, I've been in the game for like six years. So different for me compared to someone starting out. You may just want to pick one of those.

Mia:

Yeah, I mean, we've heard a lot about, you know, TikTok refugees and, you know, people who are jumping off Twitter to go to Blue Sky or, you know, off TikTok to go to Little Red Book. Are you feeling like that kind of urgency or is your strategy just to kind of bide your time, wait and see, kind of stick to what you know?

Maddie:

Yeah, I would say the platforms that are providing me success, I would just stick with them. I can't see myself jumping. Like I said, I'm going to start YouTube this year. I haven't had a YouTube channel before because to me that makes sense. Just given the data that I'm getting from my TikTok when it's long form, I do get really good feedback, but I'm thinking the algorithm over there isn't loving that right now. It's not prioritising long form and I'm finding myself cutting things short when that's not my nature. So then I want to bring it to YouTube because it feels that that's a platform that can support that. But yeah, think just stick with one or two. Don't jump. Again, it's been about that trend. You're not really, like, what's the point of jumping on a trend if it doesn't really make sense for you?

Mia:

Yeah, I'm interested to know why in particular for high ticket and service providers and why there were certain types of content you said that worked for them.

Maddie:

I think it all comes back down to authority and educational style content, but it's more authority. Like if you have a high ticket marketing business, someone's not gonna see a 30 second reel of me and go, I'm gonna buy that and invest $10,000. You know, they wanna know more about Maddie, the culture. They wanna know, okay, does she actually know what she's talking about? And I think you can't portray that in a one-to-two minute. Like I feel like, I need like a 25 minute video before I can really prove myself. And that's why I think the podcast does so well because you have that 25 to 30 minutes of someone just talking and going, oh my god, yeah, she knows what she's talking about. So I think if you do have a more expensive product where the customer touch points at 25, you're probably lowering your touch points by having a super long piece of content out there.

Mia:

Yeah, it makes sense. The more your customer’s going to invest in you money wise the more time they're also willing to invest in the socials

Maddie:

Yeah, 100%. And I've seen it on my, well heard it on my sales calls a million times that, I've listened to you on your podcast. I've watched a lot of your TikTok videos. So you don't even need a pitch to them. Like I've had people say, you don't even need a pitch to me. Like I just want to work with you. And that's the power of long form and video content is like, you don't need a pitch because you've done been doing the pitching on your social channels for whatever, how many posts that you've been doing.

Mia:

Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Maddie. There's been some really great gems in here, I think for small business owners who are confused about the world of social media or just want some clarity on how to put things into practice. So thank you. Thanks very much. 

So now that we've had some insights from an expert, Maddie, I wanted to chat to a small business owner. 

A small business owner who is currently using social media marketing really effectively to drive business growth. Philip Kuch is the owner of a small bakery in Melbourne called Goldelucks. And I think here's an example of a small business owner who really understands social media and also just how to use it to its maximum potential. If you are on TikTok or Instagram, you might already have heard of Goldelucks. They post these short attention grabbing behind the scenes videos and they really show what the day to day operations of the bakery looks like. 

The content is kind of quick, colorful, lighthearted. It heavily features the owner, Philip, and his employees. And I think most importantly, it never takes itself too seriously. It's really authentic. The brand posts these infamous, I'll call them human anatomy shaped donuts, and also posts these quick kind of quirky skits that feature the employees running around, having fun, et cetera. So Phil's joining us today to explain how social media marketing can work for a small business in practice. It's all well and good to get tips and tricks from an expert, but how do you really put these into practice in your day-to-day business operations? Hello, Phil, and thank you for joining us. 

Phil:

Hi Mia, thanks for having me on.

Mia:

All right, so first off, Phil, we've had you on ISB before actually talking about your social media presence. But I've also had you pop up on my social media feeds with your videos. Now from what I've seen, you're an example of a small business owner who I think just really gets social media marketing. And first off, I'd be really interested to know what your aims are with your social media presence.

So for instance, do you use it to be discovered by people? Do you use it to make sales? Do you use it to build trust with your audience? What is the goal here for Goldelucks?

Phil:

Yeah, so as a small business owner, you have to be really resourceful and social media is a great way to do that because with a limited marketing budget, social media is free. It doesn't really cost any money to post videos other than deploying the staff members to make the videos or your time. So for us, social media for us is more of a discovery channel. We use it as a top of funnel to stay top of mind with customers, especially with gifting you don't really like, if we popped up in your feed, you're not going to want to buy straight away, you'll need an occasion to buy it for. So it's really important for us to stay top of mind for our followers and our customers. Yeah, with social media, it's a long-term strategy for us. So we think of it as the very top funnel of our marketing channel. Then hopefully we get them to visit our website and then from there they sign up for our newsletter or they get retargeted one of our paid ads. And so yeah, very top of funnel for us.

Mia:

Yeah, so that kind of echoes what our marketing experts said earlier how social media generally works best for discovery. So yeah, with that in mind, I'd love to know how your current social media marketing strategy came about. Like what was the process of developing this from the beginning?

Phil:

Well, I can honestly say this, that there was no strategy to begin with. When we first started doing social media, making content for ourselves, it was back in 2021. We saw TikTok taking off. I was one summer break ahead and I saw all my little cousins using TikTok and I was like, is this app? So I spent the whole summer just scrolling through TikTok and I was like, wait a minute, this could be a game changer.

After the summer break, I decided to hire a marketing agency to make content for us first. And I think we paid for like $400 a video, like 15 second videos and two grand a month or something like that. And I remember giving them my account and being really excited. I was like, oh, finally, you know, we can like, you utilise this channel. And the first round of results were really disappointing. I think we got like, got like a couple hundred views and barely any new followers.

And so, as a business owner, you look at it and you're like, okay, you know, what's point of all this? You know, if I'm spending so much money, what's the point of it? I'm not like a big multinational who can just throw away money and just, you know, just, just write it down in my marketing report that it's done and dusted. So after a month, we're like, we probably like, we just chatted at the agency. We're like, you know, I'm so really sorry, but I think this is working out and I think you can agree. 

And we decided to end the partnership there and from there I was like, you know, let's give it a try ourselves. Let's see how we go. It took us about maybe 10 minutes to put together a video and we just picked some random sound that was like trending on TikTok. And then like that video blew up. We had half a million views within the first 24 hours and so many new traffic. I was like, wait a minute, if I was to calculate this in my head, it would have been like, you know, like a thousand dollars free clicks to the website and I was like, like my little mind was blown. 

My mind was like, we're onto something. That's, we kind of just started from there. And, over time we just kind of like, you know, through a few things, like, you know, maybe we try a bit of vlogging. We can try a bit of trends, you know, that sort of thing. But to be honest, there was no, no strategy at all at the beginning. And my, my whole motto is to just jump in and try to figure out as we go. So I kind of live by that now because I learned from that situate, let you know that scenarios like, okay, you know, if you put yourself out there, you never know what you'll, you'll get back.

Mia Lockett:

I'm so glad that it worked out for you. I'd like to dive into your marketing agency experience actually because I think unfortunately this is an experience that a lot of small business owners can relate to. You hire a marketing agency to help you grow your business but you don't see the results that you expect. So I'm interested to know what you think went wrong with your particular agency experience, like why those videos maybe didn't work and what advice you'd give to other small business owners considering outsourcing their marketing.

Phil:

I think first of all, like as a business owner, you know, not, always think no one's going to do a better job than you do. And it's true. Like no one will ever be as passionate as you are. Um, but at the same time, I feel like when it comes to social media in 2025, and, um, especially when I first started making content ourselves in 2021, was COVID and, um, it was, I feel like that was a turning point in content creation. You know, people became conscious of where they put their money. You know, they want to support local small businesses in Australia. And I think we recognised that really early on that people wanted to connect with stories. And I studied journalism and marketing, so I love telling stories. So I feel like the agency partnership didn't work out because the agency couldn't authentically tell our stories the way that we want to be told. And in a way where it wasn't like,

I guess like manufactured. think when you work with an agency, a lot of it is too produced, too manufactured. And people can tell that, especially in 2025, know, people are very aware of what is produced and what is manufactured. So yeah, I just really think that content creation has just changed a lot and people are just smarter and they don't want fake stuff. They just want authentic stories.

Mia:

Especially in this age of you know, you've got AI and even like fake people turning up on your feed to sell your products. And it's really, you know, this all calls back to the conversation that we just had with Maddie, where she was talking about how authenticity is what sells right now. We've talked a bit about what you want from social media, Phil, which is to be discovered and also to stay top of mind. I'd love to know some of your content creation secrets. How do you create content that really engages people?

Phil:

Well, you know, I'm a really, I'm really resourceful, you know, I use what I have and we have some really visually hooking donuts and you know, if I must say very human anatomy looking donuts and we play to our strengths, you know, we, we, you know, as someone who loves to tell stories, I love to tell stories as well, whether through, you know, behind the scenes content or what's happening in the day or what's happening through the week. And so I think first of all, getting the visual hook down, right doing a lot of the pre-recording stuff, like writing a script, having an idea of like what you want to say and like, not just like mindlessly telling, you know, I'll just say, yeah, I this, today I did that, you know, like what was the conflict? What was the resolution? You know, I almost think of it almost like a mini TV show and like people are tuning in. But also, I also think in 2025, founder led content is the way to go. People really love getting to know, you know, the founders and the people behind the business.

So we start with a lot of founder content and then we also include a lot of our staff. So, you know, like reoccurring characters and like side characters, supporting characters, you know? And of course I'm the star of the show as narcissus as that sounds. But I think for social media, it's really important for people to connect with a familiar face. you know, if you constantly have a rotating cast, you know, it's like any other TV show . People weren't, weren't tuned in cause they feel like they can't engage with that story. but also I think it's really good to like take advantage of new features when it comes out. 

Something that we've been jumping on at the moment is Trio reels on Instagram, which is an amazing feature where, know, it's Instagram lets you post videos and not show it to your followers, to new people. So people who's never seen your content and in a way it's almost like free ads for your business without having to pay anything, but also you get to test the content with a new group of people. So yeah, we've been reposting our trending and viral videos. They're a feature to get, yeah, further new followers. So it's been great. So jumping on new features is amazing as well.

Mia:

That sounds like a really useful feature that, what's it called? Trio reels? 

Phil:

Trio reels. Yep.

Mia:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, awesome. And I find it interesting how you've kind of balanced authenticity and yet you say you've got it like a script and everything, which I, maybe that is authentic to you. Like if you're a marketer, you're a journalist, you're, you like telling stories, you know, this TV show concept that is your authenticity.

So it seems like a lot of small business owners are finding success at the moment by appearing in their own social media content. And I think this can really be effective in building trust with your audience and establishing this kind of personal brand. I'd love to know though how you make this work in practice because I know a lot of people listening probably hate the idea of actually having their face all over their social media feed. How do you get over that fear of appearing in front of a camera?

Phil:

Oh gosh, like I have to say, I am the last person to put myself out there. I've been doing business for 10 years now. This is my 10th year. And for the first half of my business journey, you know, I came from that. were on Facebook before Instagram was around and Instagram happened. Instagram and then TikTok kind of like changed everything. But pre-TikTok days, you know, we had that really curated mindset when it came to marketing a business, you know, everything had to look perfect. And so...

I was really scared to put my story out there and put my face out there but I just think the hardest step was the first one. Once I put the first video about myself and I kind of just introduced myself, I kind of got over that nerve really really quick and I think a lot of it comes to people worried about what will my friends think, what will my family think, will they think I'm a loser, that sort of thing but...

I'm just a big believer now to just, who cares? I'm not sure if you listen to Mel Robbins, but she has this amazing theory called, Let Them, just let them think what they want to think. You can't control what they think. And I just resonate with that so much because you're doing something that people wish they were doing and you should just be proud of what you're doing. So first of all, getting over that mindset is really important. And second of all, the Trio reels feature that I mentioned earlier is an amazing way to start.

Mia:

Yeah, yeah, and I'd be interested to know, you know, do you does your face even need to be in it? Does your voice even need to be in it? Is this a step that business owners can take through, you know, text only or just filming their day without any of their body being in it? So you are running your bakery, right? And maybe you just film the products themselves. I know a lot of your videos just are a shot of your hands in the product.

Phil:

Yeah, 100%. I think, I was gonna say, I think when it comes to content creation, the amazing thing about it is that you can express yourself in any way you want. Like you said, just show your hands and have some text. There's so many ways to express yourself and you don't have to put your face out there if you, you don't have to put your face out there at the beginning if you're not comfortable with that. Just do what you're comfortable with and you'll find your audience, because TikTok and Instagram is so massive. You'll find your audience.

Mia:

But as I'm sure you know, Phil, it's not enough just to create. You also need to analyse how your efforts are going. So how do you analyse the performance of your content? What outcomes are you actually looking for? And I'd also like to know what tools you use.

Phil:

Well, I don't use anything fancy to be honest, know, like I said, you have to be resourceful as a small business owner. So I do have a nice looking spreadsheet on Google Sheets where it's just like my daily business performance, you how much sales we get, the traffic, the, reddyou know, the conversion rate, that sort of thing. Nothing really fancy, all this data you can find in Shopify or through your Google Analytics. And so I have this habit of just like tracking my daily performance every day and just seeing, I think by doing that practice, you can see and spot on like any spikes in like activities. So for example, if we had a video go viral, we would see like a massive, you know, traffic increase and like maybe that might lead to sales, maybe it won't. But at least we can gauge on a day to day basis, whether what's working, what's not. And so,

I really love to advocate for like doing that because you get to know your business. know, you it's like, it's like, it's like, you're getting to know a really good friend and like, know, every single thing about them. So I think tracking your daily performance is a hundred percent really important. And, I wasn't saying, sorry. but when it comes to metrics, we track traffic for social media. That's how we measure our success. Because like I said, it's a top of funnel channel for us and we don't expect sales when people first discover us because they have to have an occasion to purchase.

Mia:

And I should say to know because, you said that you track traffic as your metric. But obviously, this is worth your while. It's leading to sales at some point. And you know, Goldelucks is doing well. You're everywhere. People have heard of you. Do you know like, you know, roughly what portion of sales come from your social media marketing?

Phil:

It's not quite clear to like to track that in this in 2025 because of like, know, Apple privacy and like, you know, every platform like Google Analytics, like give their own version of your reports and Shopify will have like a different version of the report. So for us, we've we've been able to spend less on our like paid channels, which is, know,  if we can like we I think over the year was like last year, for example, we spent 10 % less on paid ads because it'd kind of Maddie up for it through social media. like just in savings alone, that would be like thousands of dollars for us. And when you're a small business, any, every dollar counts and a couple of thousand dollars is a lot of money.

Mia:

Yeah, and that's great. It is clear over the long term that this is having a really positive impact on your business. I think it also goes to show that small business owners aren't using fancy tools. You've got your spreadsheet and you can't really go into a lot of that data often. So I think that's relatable to people. I like that you've mentioned that actually.

Phil:

Yeah, and I also like as a little piece of advice, please don't like sign up for anything fancy. Like a lot of those fancy softwares probably don't, it's not needed as a small business. Like they're probably Maddie for like bigger businesses. And at the end of the day, you just need to know how much money you're making. And that's all that matters at the end of the day. Like if you got that, use that as a north star for every decision you make, like you'll help you like a miles ahead.

Mia:

Mm, mm, yeah. Have you yourself used one of these, you know, fancy tools before or do you know anyone who has?

Phil:

Yes I have, I sign up for a lot of them. That's why I've learned my lesson. Like a lot of those tracking software that promise to like, you know, we'll give you 100% accuracy tracking, that sort of thing. But I found that just doing my Google Sheet was the most accurate way because every, like I said, every software has their own version of your performance and nothing is more as accurate as tracking daily performance.

Mia:

Yeah, really interesting. Yeah. So as much as all of this sort of advice sounds lovely, we know that in practice, in the day to day of running your small business, not everything goes to plan. What do you find difficult about social media marketing, Phil? Are there any big challenges that you faced in implementing this strategy and how have you dealt with them?

Phil:

Yeah, I have a love and hate relationship with social media. I, at the start of my journey of content creation, I Maddie  a lot of the videos myself, like scripting and recording and setting up and cleaning up, that sort of thing. And I just burnt out for the last year or so. I just feel like I ran out of stories to tell. And it just came to a point where I just couldn't even open the app anymore. Like it just, it just wasn't serving me anymore. 

And I really struggled with that. But more recently, I decided, I was like, you know what, this is crucial to my business. I need to do it and I can't avoid it. The only way to do it was to build systems and building a team to help me. And I know not every business has the resources to do that and I'm very lucky. But I think protecting your energy is really important as a small business owner. 

So if it means you have to spend a bit to…to set this system up, it will be worth it in the long term because it will start snowballing in the long run. So yeah, now we have a small team, just Joleen and Tom, they helped me come up with ideas. Every Wednesday morning we brainstorm ideas and we kind of do the prep work for the recording. And Thursdays in the mornings, we'll just do like a recording session of like two hours, just get as much content as we can, film all the Instagram stories, film, you know, the trends that we want to do. And then on Friday, Tom just goes through and edits all the videos and starts scheduling the posts for the following week. But having a team just to set that up for you, just helps me to focus on other areas of my business, like growing the business. And you'll find that once you do that, you actually make up for it somewhere else. I think, yeah, building that system is really important if you want to do it long-term.

Mia:

Yeah, that's great that you're sort of now at the point where you've moved past doing everything yourself, you build a team, you've got some systems, etc. You've already kind of told us what this looks like. I'd love to know what the output of your team is, like how much they create per week.

Phil:

Yeah, so we do, we try to do like four or five trending videos, like nothing amazing, like nothing that requires heavy editing, just like a setup, the camera, and just like, oh, let's just do these trends. And then we also try to do one vlog a week. Sometimes if there's not much going on a week, we kind of just roll over to the next week. But yeah, one vlog just so that we can connect with our followers. So we think of the training videos for, you know, for people who haven't met us before. we're trying to like get them also it's almost its own funnel. So we use trending videos, top of funnel for social media. So people will discover Goldelucks through there. And then after they discover us, we kind of like use a vlog to kind of like hook them in with our story and like get them to like engage with us. And so yeah, that's all we do. Like there's nothing rocket science about that. We just kind of approach it very logically and yeah, we just do what we can and we don't force upon ourselves if we can't find five good trends and we would rather just save those ideas or, you know, save that time for next week.

Mia:

I think I'm gonna need a few definitions from you here for people listening. Vlog, what is that?

Phil:

Yes. So vlog is called a video blog. That's the technical term for it. But basically we just record a bunch of videos throughout the week and then we piece it together. And then we kind of just tell, narrate, guess like narrate what happened throughout the week. Like, for example, just before Valentine's day, we had a power out and like, we had to get like a generator. This is a true story. And you know, like, and then like, we couldn't do all that prep work. So we stayed up all night, you know, doing the packaging and like prepping all the work, know, that sort of thing. I think, yeah, that kind of thing is almost like a diary entry, but like for your audience to follow and yeah.

Mia:

I fear it's sort of appealing to that voyeuristic sort of tendency that we all have. We really want to see what other people are up to. 

Phil:

Yes, it's human nature.

Mia:

And you also say you're looking at emulating trends each week when you make this content with your team. Can you explain what that process looks like and what you mean by that?

Phil:

Yeah, so with trends, it's always a bit trickier because you can't make trends four weeks in advance unless you're a fortune teller, like unless you can foresee the trends. So sometimes a really good trend might come up and it might last for like three days. And after three days, people on the TikTok universe and the Instagram universe have moved on to another trend. Sometimes you have to be really quick with responding to that trend. But when it comes to making trends for your business, it's always really good to add your own twist to it. I think a lot of the times when I see other businesses online, they fall in the trap of like, just recreating the trend, like without ending their own twist. So as a follower, you don't really get the context of what the business does, you know, and why, what their story is. So we always try to add like our own twist to it, whether it be like including our products or like, you know, or making the trend revolve around our product. Something we did recently was the cupcake.

We were all blindfolded and we tried to like pipe a cupcake and we added our own twist to that and yeah that video went like nuts. We had 20 million views from that trend alone. From there we've got a bunch of new followers and then we just yeah once you get these new followers you have to like give them a reason to follow, keep following you and engaging with you. So that's when we include vlogs in so that way they get to know us.

Mia:

So you grab them with the trend and I'd assume that if you make content that is trendy, I know on some apps if you use audio that's quite popular that boosts your content to people's feeds. Is that correct? Is that how it works?

Phil:

Yeah, yeah, so I think it's very human nature to like, gravitate to familiar things. So using trending sounds is really good because as a viewer, when you're scrolling through the TikTok app or Instagram, if you're familiar with an audio, you're like, okay, what's this about? And you're more likely to keep watching. So it's a really good strategy to like just include trending audio or trending music when you're making content, because people will most likely stick around for it.

I don't think it's good to do just trends. I think if you only just do trends, the algorithm would show you a video to a sort of group of people who only like to watch trends. And so it's really important to think of the algorithm as like, you got to train it. Like it's a robot. You got to train the algorithm to show your content to the right people. So that's why we do vlogs because we don't want the algorithm to just show us to just people who don't want to engage with like longer form content or like stories.

But when it comes to like making non-trendy videos, it will work as well. Like the algorithm is so big and the whole world is so massive that it will find your audience. All you have to do is keep trying. Don't be put down by the first unit that doesn't go viral or doesn't like, you know, perform as well. The goal of social media isn't to always go viral. I think going viral all the time isn't good for your business and your profile and your account because you'll start getting like random followers from like, that's not in your demographic. 

Like for us, it doesn't make sense for us to get people following us from the US because we don't excel to the US. So, Viral, if you keep doing that, your account will only be shown in that region. So that's why I say Going Viral isn't the goal. The goal is to engage people and get them to visit your website and that sort of thing. So yeah, you'll find your audience at the end.

Mia :

Thank you very much, Phil, for sharing your story with us and sharing your strategy.