Welcome to the Virtual Antics Podcast , where we help entrepreneurs streamline their business to six figures and beyond . These short , sweet and info-packed episodes will inspire , educate and leave you feeling motivated to take one more step forward in your business . So put down your never-ending to-do list , because in this podcast , we are interviewing the best of the best in the entrepreneurial world as they spill their secrets to success . This podcast is sponsored by Nadora , the all-in-one software for entrepreneurs to grow their business , with unlimited landing pages , automations , emails and text campaigns , and so much more . I'm your host , natalie Guzman . Now let's get into it .
Speaker 1Hey , welcome back to the Virtual Insights Podcast . I'm your host , natalie Guzman . So excited . We have a really fun and interesting call ready for you guys today . I have Julia Black-Parrison on the call . She is the CEO of Stratus Creative Marketing . She's a marketing strategist who focuses on helping businesses improve their relationship with social media . Oftentimes , business owners are frustrated because social media marketing feels more like throwing darts at a dartboard than actual lead generation right ? So by combining social media email strategies , julia and her team have created a lead generation formula that brings in more leads for clients and increases their revenue .
Speaker 2Welcome Julia . How are you doing today ? Wonderful Thanks for having me , natalie .
Speaker 1I'm so excited because we're going to talk about one of my favorite subjects . I love marketing . That's why I built a marketing virtual assistant agency . It's definitely so interesting . There's so many different aspects , and I love that you have this strategy that combines social media and email . So how did you get ? Started into the marketing world .
Speaker 2Yeah , so I actually like a lot of millennials .
Speaker 2I was working at a job that didn't have a social media marketer , and I was the youngest , and so I got put in charge of the social media because somehow we knew what we were doing , and so that's really how it all started . I came out of the nonprofit world , and in a nonprofit everybody does a little bit of everything , so I was never meant to be a marketer at the time , but I slowly self taught social media , then learn how to build websites , and then , when a job went south , I decided to go off on my own and try to build a business , and so I had three months of savings and I was like all right , that means you have three months to show that you have proof of concept . Like , can you even get one client ? And I did still here , and within six months I was hiring my first contractor , and then after a year , she became my first employee , and so I celebrated six years in the biz , and so that has been awesome . Just to see how much my life has changed since then .
Speaker 1So that's awesome and I love that . It's like never the path that we planned . You know we think about like high school and college . They're like what do you want to be when you're older ? Well , who says like a marketing strategist ? Probably my daughter and I think that's like about it ?
Speaker 2No Well , think that's like about it , no well . And that's the thing is . I feel like younger generations are finally like oh , I want to be a social media manager , but like when you and I were going to high school , like social media managers didn't exist , like that wasn't a job . Um , recently I talked to somebody who they said that when they after high school , they wanted to be a YouTube content creator and I was like , oh cool , have you started a YouTube channel ? And she's like no . I'm like wow , that is the first . Like people don't go viral just automatically .
Speaker 1I was like I highly recommend starting now yeah , and the longer that you do something , the more likely you're going to be successful . I think about podcasters and they always say you know everyone . My first question from clients when they come to us for podcasting , they're like when do I get sponsors ? I'm like the the like most podcasters have to be a podcaster for two years before sponsors will even consider them .
Speaker 2Yeah , and like you have to have the numbers to show it Like , and so I think , and you have to start like numbers to show it like , and so I think and you have to start like even we have that with clients with social media . They're like well , when will I hit 10,000 followers ?
Speaker 2I'm like I have no idea like , let's get you started , see , like , how you're attracting followers . And then like , let's keep doing it , and then , once we're in it , I'll have a better idea of how fast this is gonna go , and even then it's very unpredictable .
Speaker 1So yeah , and think about it . You could have 10,000 followers , not have a single relationship or any one of them purchasing something , right ? So would you say like building a relationship ? Um , on social media is a really important part to your marketing strategies oh for sure .
Speaker 2I have , um , somebody in my network who has 150 followers but got a lead off of it made 10 grand from them . And I have other clients who have 20,000 followers and are not making any money . And so I think there's like a really popular misconception that , like , more followers equals more money , and that's not true . More followers , more followers , equals more money , and that's not true . More followers actually generally equals more problems . Um , because you have more opinions to handle , like you can come under fire for things that you say if they're not your tribe um , or if they're not your um , your group , um , your people , and so I think there's that misconception that , um , oh , I have to get more followers . There's an advantage to having more followers . Like , I won't say that there's not , but I think that , no matter what , whether you have 150 or 10,000 , if they're not the right followers , they're not going to do anything for you .
Speaker 1So yeah , 100 and it's so so much harder . I feel like you , you can grow really fast only up to some point , and if you want to take it further , you have to have a relationship with your viewers , and that's what the people I feel like that's gone viral , um , like they show up on their stories , they show up on lives , they're showing up in their daily content and so that all showing up is just the first part of a relationship , right , I think about it like dating , and so you know you can show up to every date , but you're not messaging them in between and , like you know , really learning more about them and asking them questions . You not just talking , you know it's not really going to go anywhere .
Speaker 2For sure I went to oh , I was just going to add on to that I went to a virtual summit that Facebook held last year , um , and in it they talked about um , multipliers , and so multipliers are like okay , if you're doing Instagram feed , instagram stories , instagram reels , it's like the different types facebook themselves , meta said the more multipliers you do , the more our algorithm likes you . So if you , if you are like in a place where you're like , my social media is just proof that my business is alive , by all means do what you gotta do and no more , but like , if you're trying to grow , the more of those multipliers that you can add on meta itself , then it will reward it . So it's just a quick tip from the , from the social gods , social media guys .
Speaker 1I love that . Yeah , and I've noticed that too , like I've been showing up in stories a lot more and I haven't had like on . I haven't really been trying to grow my Instagram .
Speaker 2But since I started doing for stories and Facebook .
Speaker 1Um , I had , like , no new followers unless I was like me , unless it was someone I knew , yeah , um , and now , all of a sudden , I'm showing up . I'm basically not even posting on my feed and I'm getting followers well , and that's the thing is .
Speaker 2I think that stories feel private and like this , I think stories also build better relationships . Um , because it feels private . You're popping into people's dms , they're getting to see , like um , more like raw footage or real footage rather than like something that's curated for the feed , and I think that people appreciate that more so yeah .
Speaker 1I love it and that way people can get to know me too , because it also helps , kind of like with the friends and family stuff , right , because I'm a really busy entrepreneur and so I don't always tell my family what's going on . But they know they can hop on my stories and find out . Totally , totally agree . Yeah , what are some of the biggest mistakes you see um people make on social media ?
Speaker 2um , one of them is , um , the lack of consistency . Like I see a lot of posting , ghosting is like a common like thing that you hear in our industry . Um , social media also rewards consistency . Um , the consistency doesn't mean multiple times a day , unless if that's what you need to do , um , but consistency means doing it regularly .
Speaker 2Um , I think the other thing , um , and one of the big mistakes that I see is businesses see , okay , so-and-so is successful . I need to do exactly what they're doing . That's like not correct . You need to figure out , like , what your goals are and then a strategy to get there , because I have a lot of people who are like , hey , all these influencers are doing this , and I'm like you're a mom and pop store on main street , like you are not an influencer , you do not need to be doing what influencers do . And I think that when we compare ourselves and then um borrow from other people's strategies rather than creating our own , um , we end up burning ourselves out too , because then we end up doing way more than what we actually have to do that's a really good point .
Speaker 1I see that in website design all the time .
Speaker 2People are like .
Speaker 1I just had someone recently . They're like I love Tony Robbins website .
Speaker 2I want to do it just like him .
Speaker 1So , tony Robbins , he attracts , you know , entrepreneurs , mainly right or high level executive . This person was her target market was young women that are trying , just trying to get their toes into business , but they're also primarily African-American and I was like , Ooh , those are two different target markets .
Speaker 1I was like his looks really pretty but is it really going to do what you need it to do ? And I think that's a really good point . And it kind of goes the same into like the emails , right ? I know a lot of people will forward me emails and be like I like how this person did it , I like how this person did it , but you're not . You're using their voice and not yours .
Speaker 1And also , like you said , everything should be based on your goals , and that's actually something I preach on websites is like , whatever your goal is , your website should reflect that . Um , yeah , so that's a really website should reflect that . Yeah , so that's a really , really good point . And then so how do you use social media and email marketing to kind of really help with your marketing efforts ?
Speaker 2Yeah , so we . So I , like I said I've been doing like this for six years and started just as like a social media manager and realized that a lot of my clients were not happy with the results . I think one of the biggest , hardest problems with social media is attribution . Like it's really hard . Social media ends up being a lot of brand awareness and in order to have attribution , you need to have things like , like your Google Analytics need to be set up really well , like you need to be having UTM links , all of these things that , like just regular business owners aren't thinking about and they shouldn't have to . And so we started realizing , like our clients weren't very happy , so we brought in ads , not just any kind of ads , we brought in lead gen ads . So , basically , we're trading an asset , usually a PDF , video series , something that's really valuable to the customer , like the end customer , we're setting that up as a download . So for all of us listening , like , if you have ever been on instagram or facebook , and you get an ad that says , hey , I have this free pdf , that's what we're setting up for our clients and we're basically telling meta facebook and instagram um , hey , we only want to pay for emails like that's what we want . We don't want to pay for viewers , we don't want to pay for , like it , going through people's feeds . Give us the emails of these people , um , and so we can use targeting to find those people , um , and so we're trading emails for the pdfs .
Speaker 2Most of our emails , like most of our clients , are getting new leads , those new emails , for all of them are getting it for less than $5 . But most of them are getting it for just under $2 . So it's kind of like a gumball machine , like you can say Okay , now I got these many emails for this much money , how many emails do you want ? And you can start working backwards . And so then we actually send out follow-up email marketing because , just like we were talking about social media creating relationships and stories , I think email also helps create relationships . There's something about the privacy of your email and letting somebody into that , and so that's how we do . It is . We're using social media to do proof of life , showing expertise , attracting people , um , then we're running ads to get new contacts and then we're following up with those contacts via email marketing , and since we've started doing that , our clients have seen better results , which makes them happier , um , but it still , lets us keep doing what we love , which is social media .
Speaker 1so oh , that's awesome , I love that . And under two dollars , uh for roi is amazing .
Speaker 2So roi for those listening , don't know .
Speaker 1Is return on investment ? Um , those type of like metrics and things are really really important when it comes to social media . Like julie was saying um , but under two dollars is actually really really good , yeah I will say , oh , go ahead . I was gonna say we've seen it like as high as like 50 , sometimes like with , especially , I feel like sometimes the niche , if you especially , yeah , the niche industries , it's definitely like a little bit higher . Um , oh , like I'm talking about like the super , super niche , like yeah , um , well , we have like we do .
Speaker 2I did want to like add a disclaimer . Like I do have one company that it costs $25 to get them a lead , but it's like an energy company in Idaho , so like who wants to really sign up for an energy company ?
Speaker 1not very many people like um .
Speaker 2Or we had one client who for a while she , um , she is a floral designer and only wants to target like within 20 miles of her zip code and so that was such a tiny audience . It cost it cost like five dollars a piece , so still like around our average but , um , definitely on a more expensive end . But for people who are running online businesses that you can , that you're coaching or that you're trying to reach every like everybody in the United States , like in Canada , those do really really well because you can . You can have a large enough geographical area that you can get a large enough audience .
Speaker 1Yeah , and you know something that we haven't really talked on the podcast I think would be beneficial , so maybe you could talk on it , but it's sample size . Can you kind of explain what that is and how it's beneficial ?
Speaker 2Yeah . So , like , your sample size is going to be really important , because if you have , like a smaller group , um , all of your costs to reach them are gonna go up . Um , if you have a bigger group , all of your costs to reach them is gonna go down because you have that bigger sample size . And so that is really really apparent in um , in ads . And I want to say , like that doesn't mean that you shouldn't niche , like that , you shouldn't like have a smaller sample size audience like that's not , that's irrelevant . Like if that's what you're doing , like keep doing it because somebody needs to serve that niche . But on the same wavelength , like if you have an audience so large , sometimes you can't really speak to the specific needs .
Speaker 2And so I think it's important , like as business owners and marketers , to kind of figure out , okay , who do I want to serve , but also , how much is it going to cost me to reach them ? Mainly because we don't want to be surprised , like when people are like oh gosh , like that's $25 , a new lead , and I'm like , okay , but let's think about this Like you are in this small geographical area , it's mostly country , um , or countryside . So , like people , your , your sample size , your group is going to be smaller , um , because I think otherwise we're just going to end up being surprised about things that , um , I think otherwise we're just going to end up being surprised about things that we could have expected .
Speaker 1So , yeah , a hundred percent . And I also say you know , never give up on a tactic when you have are only testing a small sample size . So say you even have a very low budget , so you're only trying to do like five . I have a lot of clients come to me and they're like $5 a day and I'm like , okay , don't expect to have results until we have at least like two to three months , because we need a big enough sample size to see what's working , what's not , to see if we have to change a landing page , see if we have to change , you know , the wording of the ad or the look or the feel . So I feel like a lot of people give up and they're like , oh't working , but they only based on they only reached maybe 100 people and I feel like for sure , more people you reach , the better understanding you have of what's
Speaker 2working no , I agree , and I think , like we say similar things to our clients , I think on the flip side , we also have clients who are like here's 10 grand , can you go spend it in two weeks ? And I'm like no , that's dumb . Like let's , let's take a couple weeks and like a quarter of that budget to test , and then like let's go spend the rest of it . Because the same way , like , if you're like test , I feel like marketing is half art , half science , like , and so half art , half science and then another half of math , like , and so I think that we have to test things , but you don't want to blow your whole budget on testing . But also , if your budget is tiny , it's just going to take longer . So I think like you have to think about , like the more money I have , the faster I can test , um , but like I've seen a lot of people blow their budgets on something that didn't work because they didn't test , and then afterwards they were like , oh shoot , that didn't work , like so , yeah , 100% .
Speaker 1We just had a scenario . So also trust the people that you hire and like from start to finish . Don't bring them in halfway it's you're going to save so much time money when you bring in like a higher expert , like Julia . So that way it's start to finish . Because we had someone come in and they they kind of had their idea of the landing page and they're like this is how I want to do , it do exactly how I'm saying , and so they didn't get the expert opinion of us . So we did exactly how they did . We ran their ad . They had 257 clicks and only four signups . That tells me the landing page was definitely where it was dropping off Right Because the ad worked . It got our clicks and it was . It was only like um a hundred dollars budget too .
Speaker 2So it wasn't . It was actually clicks and it was . It was only like um $100 budget too .
Speaker 1So it wasn't , it was actually that's amazing . Yeah , so 257 clicks off $100 budget . I was like awesome , that's amazing . And then the but only having four signups . I was like that's a landing page issue . So luckily we went in and we just like completely redid it and now it's the ads are working great but , yeah , and AB testing too . Can you explain what AB testing is ?
Speaker 2Yeah , so AB testing , we use it a lot for ads .
Speaker 2That's where we're creating . When we do it for ads , like we're basically putting up , okay , the same image but different captions , or the same caption but different images , like it goes all the way back to like grade school , when we learned , okay , like what's what works better , but like we have to have like a control , um , and so like we have our variables and our controls , um , and so we can see , um , which graphics attract people more , which captions speak to people more . You can do it with email , you can do it with websites , like you can do it with email . You can do it with websites , like you didn't do it with anything really , and you could do it from with websites . You could do like two weeks with one type , two weeks with another type . You could also do ads that go to like either one and see which ones perform better . There's so many different ways to do it and I think that when we don't do it , we're missing out on being able to optimize what's going to work best 100% .
Speaker 1We actually just talked about this in depth in our Nadora Facebook group , which I know a lot of you guys listening are in . So that's awesome . We love you guys . But we went in depth on this because a lot of people were changing multiple things at once and we're like no , how do you know what's working , what's not ?
Speaker 1I was like you got it . I love that . You said two weeks this and two weeks that you have to change it . Wait , look at the data and then change something else . It's not a get rich quick thing . It's not like instant result . You are going to continue to be improving .
Speaker 2Totally , and it goes back to the idea even with ads like if you have a budget to do testing , you can test faster . If you don't have the budget to do testing , it's going to take more time , because you could absolutely build two pages , run ads to them and then test it that way and you could figure out your results in a week . But you have to have the budget to do that . And so I think that that's where there's some confusion , where some people can get their testing done quickly because you're right , like you only want to change one thing at a time . But if you can test it for two days with a budget and then change another thing , you could do that whole process faster . But you have to have the eyes to see it , and so that's why I usually do things for at least two weeks If there's not budget behind it .
Speaker 1That's a really really good point . So where can we find more about you and your services ? Yeah , for sure .
Speaker 2So come and visit us on Instagram . That's where we spend most of our time . It's Stratos Creative . It's S-T-R-A-T-O-S . Our website is stratoscreativemarketingcom . Yeah , that's where we , but really Instagram is like where we hang out the most . Like , you can see all of our staff , we can see our pets . You can see , like like we , a lot of us travel while we work , and so you can see a lot of those adventures . So we'd love to have you over there Awesome .
Speaker 1I'll make sure I put all that in the show notes as well , but thank you so much , Julia , for coming . It has been so much fun and we will talk to you guys next time on the virtual antics podcast .