Turing Insight Into Action

In this episode of Torch Talk, Lindsey Chupp is joined by Julia Kooser for a blaze Business Expo wrap-up, breaking down the key insights, frameworks, and marketing resources shared during the event.

The conversation focuses on one of the biggest challenges business owners face today: lack of clarity. Lindsey walks through how many companies are making marketing decisions based on guesswork instead of data, and why that leads to inconsistent results. From there, they unpack the practical checklist shared at the Expo, covering how to evaluate your business across marketing, sales, leadership, and more.

They also dive into how to build a marketing strategy that actually works. That includes defining clear goals, understanding your audience, evaluating your current performance, and identifying gaps and opportunities. Lindsey emphasizes that marketing should function like a controlled experiment, not a series of random tactics, and explains how businesses can move toward more predictable, repeatable growth.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• Why lack of clarity is one of the biggest marketing challenges businesses face
• The importance of data over “gut decisions” in building strategy
• How to determine the right marketing channels based on your goals
• Evaluating your current marketing performance and identifying gaps
• Building a repeatable strategy that can scale into new markets

This episode serves as a practical extension of the blaze Business Expo, designed to help business leaders move from ideas to action with clearer direction and better decision-making.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You don't know how many leads you got last year, if how much you spent on marketing, what your closing rate is, and if you're going off of guesses or guts, that is a problem. It doesn't mean we won't come up with a solution, but it means that we don't have enough data to know whether what we're putting together will work or not work. Welcome back to Torch Talk, the show where we spotlight bold leaders growing their businesses and communities with grit and purpose. Today's guest is Julia Coozer, Director of Client Success at Fierce Creative Solutions. I'm actually going to turn it over to her so she can interview me. We're going to do a breakdown of the Blaze Business Expo and go through all of the marketing resources that we put out there. So maybe you're thinking about analyzing your marketing, uh, take a look at what's working, what's not working, and put together a comprehensive strategy. So we're going to talk you through that.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

So actually, our guest today is Lindsay Chupp, founder, CEO, visionary of Fierce Creative Solutions. So welcome, Lindsay. Thank you, Julia. So we are a couple weeks off of Blaze Expo. Really? It's in it's in one week, but we're super excited.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Um, we're really excited for it coming, and we're really excited for when it's over, and you can stop making decisions because you have decision fatigue at this point. You don't care about the small details, you know. You're just like, please, somebody else help me out with these decisions.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Yes. Yeah. Um, let's start a little bit with just Blaze Expo overview, why we have the Blaze Expo, um, and what the panel is that you're speaking on.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Okay, so the Blaze Business Expo is meant to be a tactical day for local business owners and leaders. It's really, I think it's for anybody at any part of the business. If I was a business owner, I would bring anybody on your team that you're looking to grow and develop so that can be an entry-level employee all the way up to you, the leader of the company. Um, so we want to make sure that it's not just inspirational, but it's super tactical. It's not just another day to walk away and feel inspired by an idea and then have no idea how to apply it. So we've created resources. The panel that I am participating in is the Business 360 panel. Um, and so that's a chance to really sit down and evaluate your business from all of the angles. So, like the full view of the business. So we're going to cover marketing, um, marketing, HR, sales, leadership, and uh risk slash finance. Um, so that really covers all of the major areas. We I'm gonna I talked about some of the challenges that business owners are facing with uh changes in marketing in 2026, and we created a checklist of resources that they can go through and kind of evaluate use to evaluate businesses on their own.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Yeah, absolutely. So before we dive into the checklist, we're gonna walk through how to use checklists. But what are some of the challenges that we're seeing either current clients face or clients that come to us that are new?

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Uh starting at the beginning, usually marketing or you know, we specialize in working with service-based businesses, but almost every single business that I talk to just does not have a lot of clarity. So everybody knows that they need to do marketing, but they don't know what to do, they don't know how much to spend, they don't know where to focus. There's a lot of different things out there. So should they be on all 16,000 social media platforms that they are? Should they be running Google ads, Facebook ads? Should they be doing SEO? Does their website need updated? Do they need to do billboards? Um, does the cost of their CRM or other softwares, you know, get counted into their marketing budget? So they just usually have a lot of questions. They might have tried working with an agency or they might have an in-house team and just be struggling to get some of the results that they are looking for, but they don't really understand. Usually they're really good at what they do, but marketing is its own specialty. And really that's an evolution in 2026, really over the last couple of years, is um the different areas of marketing have become so complicated that you almost need specialists in each one of the areas. I always cringe a little bit for the in-house marketers who say that they're the the only person there and they're wearing a lot of hats. I feel bad for them because I sat in that seat for a really long time. Um, if you're not able to outsource because of budgeting restraints, it just puts you in a really hard spot because there's so much changing so quickly that it's it's impossible, honestly, to keep up with. So I'm grateful for the team here at Fierce because we have people who specialize in social, in SEO, PPC, and email marketing, a graphic designer, a web developer. Their job is to know those fields inside and out, what's coming up with their platform changes, what's relevant for AI in their specific field. Um, so there's just, you know, a lot to know and a lot to keep track of, and that can just feel a little bit overwhelming, both to an in-house marketer or but also to the owner of the company.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so we got started with the problem. When a client comes with us, how do we work through some of those things with them? So starting with the budget and then the strategy, like chicken and the egg, how do I spend and what do I spend and where? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Um, we could put out a like we call it a blank check strategy. So if we can do anything in the whole entire world, this is what we would do for you and your business. We always dial it back to what can actually happen in real life. So, what's the point in having this fairy tale dream if it's not possible for it to come true? Um, usually we have a certain threshold of spend, we want somebody to be at, but we need to take a step back and understand the business from a uh like a big picture first. So, where are you at currently with revenue? What do you need the most? Uh, what services do you really focus on? What geographic area do you focus on? Those things can highly affect the budgets and the strategies that we recommend. Uh, an example of that is we work with a deck contractor who works both in the Columbus market and the wheeling market. And some of the strategies that we put in place overlap, but some of them are very specific to the geographic area. Those are two really different areas. And so the way that we communicate, I wouldn't recommend doing newspaper advertising in the Columbus market, but I do in the wheeling market because we've seen that that's worked for them over the over in that area. So we always want to just go high-level enough. We make recommendations that are best for the client and their current budget and where they're at. Um, we're not making those recommendations off of what would be best for Fierce, but what will be best for them first. Um, once we work through some of those questions, then we can start with a place for a budget. Uh, usually if somebody is a brand new service-based business, they can't do everything at the highest level. So they need to figure out what is the best place to start. If they have time, it might be better to start with social media and SEO because those are an investment in the long term. But if they need to turn leads on right away, then it probably would be better just to go ahead and start with PPC and we're able to control budgets in that way.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

So it sounds like we are asking a lot of questions as well, really to get to know the business. Um, maybe some of these questions they don't have answers to, just helping them work through those questions and the problems so that they can determine the answers themselves. Once we have that information, how do we work with a client to determine what service to start with and at what level?

SPEAKER_01 7:33

Well, let's start with actually if they don't know the answers to the questions. That's the first problem. Yeah. If you don't know how many leads you got last year, if how much you spent on marketing, what your closing rate is, and if you're going off of guesses or guts, that is a problem. It doesn't mean we won't come up with a solution, but it means that we don't have enough data to know whether what we're putting together will work or not work. So also, if we're gonna do a Google Ads campaign and we're gonna generate leads, we want to know that you're going to track it on your end as well. So we talk a lot about that. We don't force our clients to have um like a CRM system or a project management system, but it does really help a lot if they're tracking things on their end. It's a little bit crazy that in the world we live in, people wouldn't be doing that. I understand those tools are expensive. Um, but just knowing the types of clients that we work with, they prefer to get their hands dirty most of the time and they don't want to have to worry about, you know, they'd much rather still write their estimates on paper sometimes. I understand the ease of use. It's just that putting in the hard work early can really pay off later. So let's just start by saying that there's a lot of tools out there that could give you a lot more clarity and help you not have wasted spent on marketing in the future if you just are willing to put the little bit of extra time in now.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Um, that being said, we've really customized our solutions again to the client's goals. So if we had a business who knows that they need to start planting the seeds for the future, so they want to grow their brand presence, but they don't necessarily need lead generation, that could change our recommendations. So we might start with like a social media package. Uh, we could do branding campaigns, you know, the budget recommendations will match those goals. Uh, if you have somebody who has a lead generation goal, um, but they have a very limited budget, then maybe we would only start with um one paid ads platform. So not doing both Google and Facebook, but just choosing one or the other. And we would choose the right platform based off of who their target client is and that geography. So I wish I could say it was black and white and like um the same for everybody, but it's really not. It really depends on them how long they've been in business. Because if they've been in business for five years, but they haven't done a lot of branding, then they have a lot of work to do rather than somebody who has been in business for 25 years and they've had a lot of yard signs and randomly done uh billboards, but they've have a lot of clients, they have a lot of word of mouth, they've maybe been in community events and networking events, they've been slowly planting the seed of who they are. That is creating a platform that is a lot better to build a lead generation um campaign off of than somebody who's starting from scratch with nothing. So you have to kind of build up that trust and authority first. And so we see a big difference in performance when it comes to cost per lead um results on organic, whenever they have spent the early parts of their business really investing in that brand presence.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Yeah. We also always say that marketing is a is a science experiment, but we want it to be a very controlled science experiment. Yes. So knowing all of those answers, that data makes such a difference between being able to know what's gonna work and track what's gonna work and then the results. And did this actually work because we have the data back it up, not because it did or didn't work because of a gut feeling? Yes. Okay, so looking at the checklist that we had from the Blaze Expo, our resource guide, we've set the direction of what our business goals are, what um do we need lead generation, do we need brand awareness? The next spot is knowing your audience. So, what kind of advice, what advice can you give to businesses trying to determine who their target audience is and where their target audience is?

SPEAKER_01 11:16

This is where having a CRM or like you know a platform data is also super helpful if you're able to track those types of things. So, you know, if you can see on average how old is your client, are you do they tend to be more male or female? And if you're not tracking that, we can go off of what you think based off of your experience. Um, and then we would take that and compare it a little bit to some research, but then also match it up to the platforms. Um, so it most of the times in service-based businesses, if you're selling to a married couple, those couples are making the decisions together, but there's usually one who's driving that decision a little bit more than the other. So the deck client that we work with, it is primarily female first. So it's usually the wife who is looking for the deck and she's doing the research and she's looking at the project and then bringing in somebody to quote that, and then her husband is a part of the process from there. Um, on the flip side, we work with a shed company where it's a little bit of the opposite. So we set tend to see a little bit higher performance from with the male on the uh beginning side, which is actually surprising to me because I feel like I have a storage issue, but I I it's true, I would never think about buying a shed. So my husband might be like the one to initiate the thought of, oh, maybe we should add a shed here in the backyard. Now that sounds very like limited. Obviously, not everybody in the world is married. Um, it's only one part of the demographic profile, but that's actually another question that we ask potential clients or our existing clients. Are more of your clients married or not married? And that can also change a little bit in the areas that you're working in. If you compare Columbus to wheeling, that could be a little bit of a different situation as well. So um knowing who you who your client is and being willing to do a little bit of a deep dive into that or let us do a deep dive if you don't want to, um, it can really be valuable in how you decide what social media platforms to focus on, what type of ad campaigns to run. Do you want to have a more feminine visual aspect? You might be a super rough and tough company, but you want to put a feminine presence out there so that you're, you know, if you're selling to women mo most, you don't want to have this like dark rogue like military vibe about you because that's probably not going to resonate with her very well.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Absolutely. Okay, so after we know our um our goals, know our audience, then we want to look at what they currently are or aren't doing to evaluate the presence and where they're at. What advice do you have to work through that?

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Um, so you definitely need to know what you're doing, like where are you at, what what is your web traffic? I am shocked sometimes by people who have no idea. So the what your website is the hub of all things marketing, so it is the foundation of where you should be driving all of your marketing channels. Um so you should know who's on your website, what are their age, demographics, and interests, what time of day, what are they mostly on mobile or are they mostly on a desktop when they're looking at your website? That can change a lot of the recommendations. Um, and then you should know the metrics for your social media platforms and any other things that you're running. So if you don't know those things, then we would work through that with you from the beginning just to kind of take a step back and make sure that we know what's happening and what's not happening. Uh, and then we can use those matched with the budget and the audience to make recommendations for what our next steps are.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

What would you say for um either existing client or a new client coming in that has um maybe some of that historical data, but they're looking to expand into a new location or expand to a new market? What kind of steps would we take then?

SPEAKER_01 15:03

I really love to work with clients on creating uh a repeatable marketing strategy that so like let's say you work in the Columbus market. If you have something, if you have key elements of a marketing strategy, I think that you should maximize the area that you're working in first and then take that strategy and apply it to somewhere else. So an example of that might be, you know, you need to have your obviously your website needs to be in shape, but then um maybe you know for sure that you get consistent results when you're posting on social media, when you're running um Facebook ads, and when you do a streaming campaign, and you have a billboard, or maybe it's radio, and the combination of all of those things really create very um predictable leads on that match your business goals. You might tweak some of those elements slightly based off the geographic area. Let's say you wanted to add in targeting Mansfield, Ohio. Well, Mansfield might do better with a radio campaign versus a streaming campaign. We can do market research to decide what is better from a geographic standpoint. Um, but there are also things that people are usually not willing to do, like boots on the ground, things. Like, are you willing to go participate in networking events to join the local chambers to become a part of the community? Because people want to work with companies who are local to them, and it really takes an investment into those communities so you feel like that.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

All right, the last section on our checklist is identifying gaps and opportunities. So, what are some things that are coming down the pike that people should be paying attention to in 2026?

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Um, so there's a few different things that are coming out. Uh, we have talked about in the past, we've talked about how personal branding is really important and can give you some leverage on social media. Uh, I think that looking at um creating things intentionally and carefully crafted in a world of AI needs to be on everybody's radar. Uh, when it comes to gaps, you know, you might be just missing huge opportunities by not doing any paid advertising at all or spending in the wrong way. I also have reviewed and audited a lot of accounts where they're only spending$500 a month because they don't, you know, that was what was recommended, and they're just really missing huge opportunities because it's not enough. Um, so there's this kind of like gray area of spend where you can just be kind of hanging out and not getting enough results. So you're spending, it's not going anywhere where if you just increased it by 20%, it would put you into the right bracket and you'd start seeing better results. Um, I would also say making sure that you have the landing pages that those ads are going to be optimized well for conversion is vital. Uh, we do separate PPC landing pages, but we keep them within the website. That way the traffic is still there, everything is retargeted as one as one audience. Um, retargeting is is an opportunity. Uh don't underestimate the branding in a world where people are spending a lot of time online. I think that they're gonna crave a lot of in-person and real life experiences and actions. And so that you know, I see regular, we've talked a little bit about how print's going to come back, but print in the right way. So, like, I'm not talking about going in the local newspaper or doing a coupon advertisement. I'm talking about like creating and curating a unique print experience and sending that out to certain clients uh through a targeted campaign. Um, that's a little bit different than some of the things that we've done in the past. So I think that you know, just having that uniqueness on the radar and making sure you're not missing. Now, those are more advanced strategies for somebody who already has a really good marketing strategy in place. That is an optimization, a level of an add-on. So I always talk about marketing as building a house. So you have your foundation, you want that to be super strong, that is your website, and then you start building up the framing, that is your uh our main services, really, but it's really the key things businesses should be doing. So SEO, paid advertising, social media, email marketing, those are the framing, the electrical, the wiring, the plumbing, all the fancy stuff that you can't see, that goes in there. And then you start adding on the decorations and all the pretty stuff and the paint colors, that's your branding and uh the postcard advertising. There's the world is the limit, really, when it comes to those types of things.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Do you have any final thoughts for businesses um looking to get clarity or build a strategy and just starting?

SPEAKER_01 19:22

So if you are local to our area, which is in Wayne Holmes, Tusk, Stark County, Ohio, we'd love to meet with you if you're a service-based business and you're looking for resources. If you're from outside of the area and you're listening, I really recommend ad interviewing and talking to multiple agencies. If you're looking for some outside resources, you need to find somebody that is a good fit for you that will be a partner that you feel like is going to understand who you are as an agency and customize your their strategies to you uniquely. Uh, if you are local, we'd love to sit down with you and you can reach out to us at FierceCreative Solutions.com and you can fill out the marketing clarity request. Perfect. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to Torch Talk. If today's story inspired something in you, share it with a colleague, future change maker, or community leader. Until next time, stay inspired, stay intentional, and keep your fire burning.