Are you spending money on marketing that isn't actually helping your small business grow? Just because something is popular, expensive, or easy to do doesn't mean it's the right investment for YOUR business.
In this episode of the S.O.B. Marketing Podcast, we're sharing 7 marketing things small business owners waste money on. We get into why these common marketing expenses can drain your budget, how to recognize when it's time to reevaluate, and where your marketing dollars may be better spent.
In this episode, we cover:
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7 marketing expenses you want to reassess
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Five categories of marketing investments that may actually be worth your money
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Three questions to ask yourself before spending another dollar on marketing
🎧 Need practical marketing advice without the agency-sized price tag?
Join the S.O.B. Community for weekly marketing support, expert guidance, and a community of small business owners who understand what it's like to run and promote a business.
Join us at https://www.skool.com/SOB
If you enjoy the episode, subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with a small business owner who could use a little marketing tough love!
#SmallBusinessMarketing #MarketingTips #MarketingBudget #SOBMarketingPodcast
Vivian (00:02) Yah, she's rolled up her sleeve and she's about to show you a Knuckey sandwich.
Chelsea (00:07) Hey everyone, welcome to the SOB Marketing Podcast, where we celebrate the SOB that you are and if you haven't figured it out yet, we mean small owned business, we don't mean SOB.
Vivian (00:19) Listen, we know that as a small business owner, you are working hard on the daily to keep your business fully operational while trying to promote it. And while some days it may feel like the business is owning you, if we're being honest with each other, I bet you would admit that you wouldn't give up the insanity for anything.
Chelsea (00:38) Our commitment here at the SOB Marketing Podcast is to give you the real talk, what works when it comes to advertising, marketing, promoting your business, and then what doesn't really work.
Vivian (00:49) And Chelsea and I promise to always keep the conversation real. Money money money money...MONEY.
Vivian (00:57) Do you know that song?
Chelsea (00:58) That sounds vaguely familiar.
Vivian (01:00) It's from The Apprentice back in the day.
Chelsea (01:02) Okay, I don't know what the apprentice is, but can I just say I was looking at these notes and Vivian had put money money money sing songy, and so my mind immediately went, money, money, money..
Vivian (01:15) Abba?
Chelsea (01:17) Must be..yes, ABBA! I thought we were gonna talk about ABBA. I don't know what song that was.
Vivian (01:22) This episode today is not about ABBA, okay. Contrary to I know Chelsea was really excited about that, but we're gonna be tackling the discussion head on.
Chelsea (01:35) Yes.
Vivian (01:36) And we're gonna do what Latinas do best, which is give you guys a little bit of tough, okay,while holding your hand. But we're gonna be looking directly in your eyes to tell you.
you're probably spending or wasting money on some things. A small business owner.
Chelsea (01:55) Ooh,
so this is our tough love conversation. That's right. Yep. Mm-hmm. We have seven. Seven?
Vivian (02:02) Yes. Seven marketing things that small business owners are wasting money on.
Chelsea (02:08) Ooh. We're doing this out of love, you guys. We don't want you wasting your money. So we're gonna talk about these seven things, why they are a waste of money. We're not just gonna call ya out. We're gonna explain why. And I think we are gonna give you some better options too. In the end.
Vivian (02:25) We are, and for each one of these, we're gonna have a key takeaway. Now, here's the thing we always remind you guys that marketing is not a one size fits all. Okay. And so what that means is you could very well listen to some of the items, one of the seven items we have listed, and think, that works great for me and it's well worth every dime I spend on it. And that can be true. The thing here that we want you to do is we want you guys to get used to asking yourself one question whenever you're dropping money on marketing initiatives or opportunities or tools or resources. And that question should be, is this actually helping my business accomplish its goal?
Chelsea (03:10) I..yes. Perfect.
Vivian (03:12) And just because it worked maybe a year ago, we want you reevaluating these things every so often because, you know, we don't want you guys out here just wasting money frivolously.
Chelsea (03:23) Before we keep going with this conversation, it's Vivian's favorite time of the episode, the pew beep beep peep pee pew marketing hot take.
Vivian (03:32) Give it to me.
Chelsea (03:33) Okay, marketing hot take. Sometimes sometimes people think that spending money is good enough. I'm spending money on a marketing initiative, so that must mean that it's a good marketing decision. Or or
if something is expensive. this is expensive, so that must mean it works.
Vivian (03:56) Mm-hmm.
Chelsea (03:57) No. No, it's not good enough to just spend money. Like you have to make smart financial decisions in your everyday life and also when it comes to marketing.
Vivian (04:09) Yeah, I think sometimes we do that as a as a what do you call it? A safety for ourselves. Like we don't wanna think that we're just out here f throwing money in the trash or setting money on fire. So we think, well, if I'm spending money on it, it's serving a purpose in my business. Yeah. Right. But to your point, and we're gonna kinda talk about this later on in the podcast or in this episode, but
You know, you should have measures in place to be able to very distinctly tell if something is actually doing you any favors, if it's leading to sales. And if it's not, then you probably just need to reevaluate and cut it off. All right, so let's get started.
Chelsea (04:52) Okay, let's get started.
Vivian (04:53) Number one of our list of seven marketing things small business owners are wasting money on. Number one, boosting social media posts just because you can.
Chelsea (05:04) Interesting.
Vivian (05:05) Yeah, okay, so we understand why you may choose to boost post. It's so so easy, correct? And I mean, you know, because the platform does make it that easy, you're like, let me just throw twenty dollars to get more eyeballs on this, but that in itself is not enough of a reason to boost a post, correct?
Chelsea (05:26) Yeah. Well for one, sure it's easy, but is it effective? Right. One. Two, is it effective doing what? What are your marketing goals? You need to have goals for all of your initiatives. If you're saying I'm spending money just so I don't know, people will look at this stuff more, I mean visibility is important. Not all eyeballs are good eyeballs. I mean, I wear glasses. No.
Vivian (05:54) Mine
are perfect, so mine are good eyeballs.
Chelsea (05:56) Whatever.
Vivian (05:58) To
your point, are you reaching the right people to convert eventually to a sale, right? and then the other thing is I think you need to ask yourself, is this better served as an ad? Like would it be better that I invest a little bit of time in actually building out an ad campaign around this idea instead of just boosting this reel that I just uploaded? The other part is I do wanna say,
I feel like it helps make us feel better about the amount of time we spent on this particular social media post or this reel, this video that we created where like I spent that thing, it took me an hour to edit. And so therefore I wanna be sure that it gets the attention of more people and therefore I'm just gonna boost it.
Chelsea (06:51) Yeah, but I get that, but then just make it the ad. Well
Vivian (06:56) Right. Yeah.
Chelsea (06:58) okay, I say that. Vivian and I recently have a co had a conversation, go listen to it, about boosting and how it has changed over the years and now there's a lot more stuff involved. Are we saying never boost a post? No, there are some instances in where and when boosting
is actually helpful or it gets the job done well enough. But we we want you guys to think about it. Yeah. Don't just hit boost. Don't just spend the money to spend the money. Be really cognizant about what you're trying to do.
Vivian (07:38) And that right there is the key takeaway. Don't ask, should I boost this post? Instead, ask, what am I trying to accomplish with this money? Okay. Am I just looking for the eyeballs or am I actually trying to spend money so that it converts to a sale? Yeah. All right. The other thing is, or I mean, awareness, building brand awareness, right? You can make the case for that. So just ask yourself that question. Number two.
Buying marketing tools that you will never use. This is probably one of the things that people spend the most money on. Just because we're scrolling through Instagram, we're look we're going to YouTube. We're like, How can I make this more efficient? Someone shares a compelling video of a new tool and you're like, take my two hundred and ninety-nine dollars a month. Okay. And then you never use it.
Chelsea (08:29) It's always right. It's always in a good place. Like you're like, I'm definitely gonna use this. You're always gonna help me. You're always hopeful, but let's be realistic. Are we actually using it? One, are we actually going to use it? I do this all the time in my personal life, Vivian. I find I see something online that I'm like
but then I sit down and I say, Chelsea, are you do you need it? Are you actually my big one is are you actually going to use it? Yes. 'Cause you're like, this is fun, this is a good idea, this is a great product. Are you gonna do it though?
Vivian (09:06) Absolutely. And it gets I hate to tell y'all, but we're being suckered
Chelsea (09:10) ohh
Vivian (09:11) okay by these companies because if you don't think they figured out that subscriptions are the place to do it, I mean you will subscribe to something and then you kind of forget about it. And if you never log in, how many of you have those hidden cost or subscriptions that you're paying month to month?
And you've just forgotten about it. Yeah. Right? So let's list Chelsea. Give us a couple examples of places or things we may be signed up for, tools that we may be signed up for that maybe we're not using.
Chelsea (09:42) Mm. Scheduling platform.
Vivian (09:44) Okay. Like scheduling post platforms to help us.
Chelsea (09:47) Uh-huh,
like not to call anyone out, but like Hubspot. Okay. That sort of thing. Link in bio tools. we have project management software, AI tools, analytics tools, email platforms. Are you sending out emails actually?
Vivian (10:06) Mm. She called y'all out on that one.
Chelsea (10:10) Meta subscriptions. You know, I with this one
If you have it, I want you guys to actually look back and see if it's helping in any way.
Vivian (10:21) Yeah, if it's actually improving your performance of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. The the big one too nowadays, because you guys, you know, we just got done. Our previous episode was on video marketing. Because video marketing is such a big deal, video editing
Chelsea (10:38) Yeah.
Vivian (10:40) tools are also a place where you where you'll find this. I know we have I think one or two subscriptions that were signed up for, you know, the podcast and how we kind of get this information out there.
But those are places where you need to ask yourself, are you actually using it?
Chelsea (10:55) Yeah. No. Exactly. Canva Pro. Yeah. Another example. I I love Canva. But if you're not actually using it, maybe you don't need the pro version, you know?
Vivian (11:08) Yeah, and I think the other thing to ask with these is are you signed up at the level that's necessary for what you're using it for, right?
Chelsea (11:17) That's a great example. That's great with email marketing. Sure. I don't necessarily want you guys to like get rid of your email platform if you're not sending out emails. I want you guys to be sending out emails. but maybe you don't need, you know, all the bells and whistles. Maybe you don't need to be at the highest tier. Maybe you can downgrade a little bit and then once you get going and it actually makes sense, you can go back to all the bells and whistles.
Vivian (11:42) Yeah, and don't feel guilty if perhaps you have been paying like way higher than maybe, you know, you should have been. Like you can always go back and probably adjust the level that you're using the tool at. What I wanna remind you guys is your business changes year to year just as life changes. And so it could be that you needed that when you first signed on for it, and then your circumstances, your staffing, your personnel has changed, and maybe you don't need
at that level. So no guilt there. what we want you to do, the key takeaway here is the best marketing tool is the one that you're actually gonna use. And we want you guys to go check your credit cards. Do okay go go look see.
Chelsea (12:25) Get your credit card instead.
Vivian (12:27) Like take a fine tooth comb. It's also we're coming up on the end of twenty twenty six. We're going, you know, we're now into that like final quarter. Go and just kind of see so that
In twenty twenty seven you can adjust and make the changes that you need.
Chelsea (12:44) Real quick, a little bit of a tangent. You are not above going through all your credit card charges, okay? I know someone who I know a franchise owner for a very, very big franchise. He's multimillionaire, okay? I've watched this man sit down and go line by line his credit card statement, and he'll ask questions too. He'll say
What is this charge for? Yes. it was for this. okay, that's fine. What was this charge for? it was for this. we need to cancel that. That's how you keep your money. That's how
Vivian (13:22) Well, and that's how you're able to kind of expand on other marketing opportunities that you have come you know throughout the year. If you're paying $100 a month for something that you are n literally not using, that's a hundred dollars a month that you could potentially be investing in social media ads, that you could be sponsoring a little league team to have your name put on the back of their jerseys, right? So just
Think of it that way, it's keeping you spending unnecessary gobs of money in places that you are never getting a benefit from is keeping you from actually being able to invest in other areas that will drive business to your small business. Yes. Okay. So number three, paying for followers, likes, or engagements. Chelsea
Chelsea (14:11) If I find out, if I find out Y'all, she's rolled up her sleeve and she's about to show you knuckey sandwich
Chelsea (14:20) Please don't do this. They're vanity metrics and they're called vanity metrics for a reason.
Vivian (14:25) They don't mean shit
Chelsea (14:28) Well, I mean, yeah. she said it way more blunt than I was about to say, but that that's exactly what it is. Focus on the metrics that matter. Are you converting?
Vivian (14:40) That's right. And that's the thing is fake or irrelevant followers are not gonna do you any like service.
Chelsea (14:50) it's
gonna hurt you. I'm gonna say it right now, it's gonna hurt you. You wanna know why? Because that's not real. And so it's gonna give you a fake sense of my marketing's working. Okay, well no. If you've paid for this, then those aren't actual customers. That's not your marketing working. That's just you trying to boost your numbers.
Vivian (15:14) it's a percentage game, okay? So it's better to have five hundred followers and have fifty percent of those people actually be real life customers or actually purchase from you. Instead of having ten thousand followers and only having one percent of those actually become customers. You see what we're saying? Like you're doing all
Chelsea (15:33) So one percent of ten thousand, go ahead.
Vivian (15:35) One percent of ten...
Chelsea (15:38) Go ahead. Okay.
Vivian (15:39) 100. but that's the quick math pop quiz.
Vivian (15:44) Yeah. And so fifty percent of five hundred is two fifty. So you're you're making more sales on a smaller amount of followers. And so our point to you is what difference does it make if you're out here buying and purchasing and wasting money on getting followers who are never going to
spend money with you. So you're n you're never gonna get that money in return. Okay. It's never a good return on investment.
Chelsea (16:13) Are you a content creator or are you a small business?
Vivian (16:16) That's right. Okay. So key takeaway, we get it. It feels like you're growing, but growing what?
Chelsea (16:24) You're not really growing if you're just paying for
Vivian (16:26) You're right. It feels like you are, but you're not.
Chelsea (16:28) You're not. Okay. Okay. Hmm.
Vivian (16:29) All right. So number four - things that small business owners, you know, are wasting money on. Okay. overly complicated websites. Ooh. Yeah.
Chelsea (16:39) Vivian,
I love this one. It is 2026. You do need a website. You can't get rid of your website. You do still need one. They are still relevant. Google is still relevant. We've had this conversation.
Vivian (16:53) And also it's the only place you actually own online. Okay. Reminder, you do not own your Instagram profile, your Facebook profile, your TikTok profile. Those social media platforms own it. If they were to change the rules, shut everything down, you're not gonna have that anymore, okay? So your website is still the thing that you own.
Chelsea (17:12) Yes. It's the thing that you own. It's fun. I get it. You want fancy animations. You want things to look super pretty and you want it to look complicated because you're good at web design. That's not how this works. That's
Vivian (17:27) That's not how any of this works, yeah.
Chelsea (17:29) not how any of this works. you want your website to be clear, yeah, concise, easy to navigate because your consumers, your potential customers don't care.
They care about your product and they want to easily get to whatever they want.
Vivian (17:47) So the thing we want you to prioritize when it comes to websites is actually the experience that the person navigating through your website is gonna have and i.e. that's a potential customer, okay? We want them to be able to find the information quickly to actually be able to, you know, look at your products. If you have products listed on there, do they have accurate product descriptions? Do you make it really easy for them to check out? All of that good stuff.
Chelsea (18:14) Can it load? That's it. You know, sometimes you add all of this extra stuff and now your website's not gonna load. And I'll tell you right now, if I'm on a website and it's taking more than like three seconds to load, I'm leaving.
Vivian (18:26) She's gone.
Chelsea (18:26) I'm gone, you're taking too long
Vivian (18:27) And she's taking her five dollars with her. So you missed out.
Chelsea (18:33) I mean that's accurate. I also wanted to say stop tinkering. And this is something that Vivian and I need to hear too. Because we're tinkerers. We're like, well maybe I can make this just a little bit better. Stop tinkering. So Vivian, what's the key takeaway for this one?
Vivian (18:52) The key takeaway for this one is going to be, is your website doing what it's supposed to be doing? Okay, which is can someone who has never heard of your business, your product or service land on your website and figure out very quickly what your purpose or your vision or your project and service is all about, right? And if not, then spending more money on an overcomp on a website that is gonna be bigger.
brighter, flashier is probably not the thing you need to be doing. Yeah. Okay. You have other problems you need to figure out, okay, before you go and dump all that money on a big one.
Chelsea (19:32) Vivian, we didn't we didn't talk about this, but plugins.
Vivian (19:35) Yeah.
Chelsea (19:36) You don't well, I mean, there are some plugins that you definitely need. Just be very cognizant again about what you're adding to your website 'cause also you could add a plug in and then it just like messes everything up.
Vivian (19:49) and this is another area we talked about subscriptions at the beginning of this episode. This is another area where if you're if you've built out a website, not only are you paying for hosting and you're paying for this and for that, but if you have plugins that you're paying for on the back end, just be sure that you're using them. Yeah. Okay. And that you're not paying for something that you're not using.
Vivian (20:09) This episode of the SOB Marketing Podcast is brought to you by the SOB community. If you're a small business owner that is neglecting your marketing,
And you feel like you've wasted money and time on marketing help that didn't deliver, or if you're just craving support from people who actually get what it's like to run and promote a small business, then our membership community is for you. Visit skoolcom/SOB to sign up today to get instant access and weekly support. That's skool.com/SOB.
Vivian (20:45) Number five.
Chelsea (20:46) Okay, let's hear it.
Vivian (20:48) Paying for marketing before fixing the actual customer experience.
Chelsea (20:51) Vivian, this is my favorite one that we have listed. Okay, why? Okay, this is my favorite one because this is like the root of the problem, I feel like.
Vivian (21:00) I thought you were going to say the root of all evil, I was like..
Chelsea (21:02) Well yea that too. No, no, the root of the problem. It does not matter how much money you spend or what you do. If you have a bad product or service, people are not going to purchase it. And I'm not saying, okay, so let me back up little bit. I'm not saying you have a bad product or service. But if people are having a bad customer experience, you might as well have a bad product or service.
Vivian (21:27) Give us some examples of little breadcrumbs that we would see if we have a problem with our customer experience
Chelsea (21:34) Okay. I was just talking about how if your website's taking too long to load, you can check this with your bounce rate. Yes. Okay. If you have a very high bounce rate, that means people are clicking on your website and then immediately leaving.
Vivian (21:48) Or it could be that that home page is not it it doesn't give an accurate description or representation of what you're actually doing. Exactly. You can check Google has a checker for speed on your website. So I did want to bring that up when you said, you know, bounce rate is a good indicator, but also literally going in, plugging your website into this checker that Google has, they will tell you how quickly or how good it is at uploading.
Yeah. In a timely manner.
Chelsea (22:19) Love that Okay, what's another good example
Vivian (22:23) um, another one would be nobody answers your phones. great. You just spent two thousand dollars on ads and the ads are working and you're getting phone calls into your dentistry office and then you know
Chelsea (22:37) no one is answering the phone.
Vivian (22:39) yes, your staff is not picking up the phone, okay? for one, you just spent two thousand dollars to shoot yourself in the foot. Yeah. And also you know, people are gonna get irritated. They're not gonna call back three or four times,right?
Chelsea (22:53) No, I would have given up.
Vivian (22:56) nobody follows up. Somebody does call in, they say they'll have somebody call them back with the pertinent information and nobody ever does. Perhaps your checkout process is terrible.
Chelsea (23:09) Ooh that's a good one.
Vivian (23:10) Okay, this can either be in person or online. maybe it takes you three days to respond to messages on Instagram when you're look when you're using Instagram. specifically to sell a service. Right? So maybe
Chelsea (23:27) oh girl don't do that?
Vivian (23:29) so maybe you uploaded a reel and you're like, hey, message me. Yeah. DM me to book. I have availability next week, but then you don't check your DMs for three days and then you're like, crap, you know, someone's tried to book with me and I like I just haven't looked at it. The other one and this
Chelsea (23:47) Vivian has lot examples of y'all.
Vivian (23:49) No no no - yea, this last one, Chelsea.
Chelsea (23:53) Okay.
Vivian (23:55) I think is the one that you will plant your flag on.
Chelsea (23:58) Okay.
Vivian (23:59) You aren't doing anything to sell to your existing or established customer base.
Chelsea (24:04) We have had this discussion, y'all. If you haven't listened to our multiple podcast episodes about returning customers, pretty pretty please go listen to that because yeah, I get kind of heated about this. It costs so much money to bring in new customers. Why are you not marketing to your returning customers? They've already purchased with you once, they know the process, they trust you, or they wouldn't have bought it in the first place.
It's gonna take less money to convince them to come back.
Vivian (24:39) It's your low-hanging fruit, but on top of that, the reason that I wanted to bring this up in number five, which we're talking about paying for marketing before you fix the customer experience. What if we started looking at selling, promoting, tapping back into our established customer base, the people that have already bought from us as a part of the customer experience for example, brow services.
If I go and get my brows done, wouldn't part of the experience be, or shouldn't it, be that the person what do you call her? It's not a a tech. What do you I don't I
Chelsea (25:17) An aesthetician. Yeah.
Vivian (25:18) I don't go get my brows done, y'all. Okay. Chelsea does
Chelsea (25:20) She got enough brows.
Vivian (25:22) I got crazy eyebrows.
Chelsea (25:23) She got enough brows for the two of us. So then when I was born I got zero brows. So I have to go get them done.
Vivian (25:29) Yes.
Okay, so the esthetician, shouldn't it be a part of the customer experience that the esthetician text you maybe sixty days out, maybe four weeks out, and just say like, hey, reminder. Yeah, two to three weeks. Yeah. Reminder, is it time for you to come get them filled? Is it time for, you know, another brow service?
That's good customer service. Okay. Don't leave it up to them to decide when they want to come back in and do that. I mean, you do ultimately, but sending them reminders and encouraging them so that way for one, this is your craft. You should be concerned about if someone is out there walking around with crazy eyebrows and then they say, yeah, I go to so and so. But what they don't say is I haven't gone to her in two years because you failed to send her reminder.
That she should be coming in every four weeks. That's not a good representation of your
Chelsea (26:24) Dang now I feel like I need a don't look at my eyebrows.
Vivian (26:29) All right. So
the key takeaway here, Chelsea, is we just want to remind people that marketing's purpose is to create awareness. And that's that's great. But if the experience is bad afterwards, then you guys are wasting money. Yeah. Okay. So just be sure that if you're spending any amount of money on marketing, that you're also double checking and making sure that the customer experience is on point.
Chelsea (26:55) Okay, so we got number six. What's number six?
Vivian (26:58) Doing marketing because someone said you have to. Okay. So examples of those.
Chelsea (27:05) Examples is Chelsea last week saying, You have to do video marketing. No, that's not an example. You do have to do it.
Vivian (27:14) Yes. we're talking about more like you have to be on TikTok. You have to do live selling.
Chelsea (27:20) Have to do a podcast.
Vivian (27:23) Yes. And then you go out and you spend all this money on equipment, on in not just money, but time. Okay. And time is money if you're a small business owner. So you're diverting your focus from your business to actually being a podcaster, right? Which we're not saying there isn't value in a podcast. What we're saying is if the sole reason that you are doing some of these marketing initiatives is because someone told you you had to and you haven't given it much thought after that about like how does it actually integrate and serve my business. How does it funnel sales? How does it funnel potential customers and clients, then you're probably doing it for the wrong reasons.
And you're probably wasting money.
Chelsea (28:08) Yes. I am so glad. I I love this one too. You you need to do what works best for your business. You also need to do what works best for you. If you cannot handle being on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram and Pinterest, don't. Yeah. Because when you can't handle something, that's when you stop being consistent. And consistency in marketing is very important.
Vivian (28:35) And all of these should have a purpose. you know, let's stick with the podcasting example. What people will tell you is, yeah, start a podcast and then just like push your your business, you know, like it's gonna help grow your awareness. What they
Chelsea (28:51) If only it was that easy.
Vivian (28:52) yea, what they don't tell you is not just the equipment, not just the there's a lot of forethought that goes into topics.
into actually creating good content, having a good discussion, having to edit, having to now if you're uploading on video, right? creating a thumbnail, actually coming up with the descriptions, doing the transcripts. You guys, they're they will tell you one part, the very beginning part of the story. What they won't tell you is the amount of time and investment that it takes if you're actually being serious about it leading to some type of like return on investment for your business.
Chelsea (29:29) Yes. And we're not saying any of these are good or bad. It's just you need to find what works for your small business.
Vivian (29:37) And Chels were are there any other examples that you have of like things that people may be doing just because they've heard someone else tell them they have to?
Chelsea (29:47) This is one that I think is perfect. You need to be sending out emails every week. Mm-hmm.
Is that effective? You know what? I'm gonna push back and say maybe not. I it depends on the industry, it depends on the relationship that you have with your email subscribers, it depends on the type of content you're sending out. Can you actually like physically handle that? Can you handle sending out an email every single week? Like, there's so many factors that go into this.
That makes it either a good or bad idea.
Vivian (30:29) You already said the key takeaway, which is basically like evaluate whether it's right for you. some of the things you want to look at while you're evaluating this, just very quickly, your audience. You may have a different audience. What resources you have, what goals, marketing goals or sales goals that you have
Your customers' behavior, okay. Know your target audience really well and determine if that's gonna be a good fit. the time and the budget you have, that's the other thing, you guys. You don't know where other small business owners are getting their money from. Okay. Maybe mommy, maybe daddy, maybe they got you know, they have a show,
Chelsea (31:09) Sugar daddy
Vivian (31:09) A sugar daddy, who knows, okay? Does
Chelsea (31:12) Maybe they never mind. I don't want to know what you're Well no, I was gonna say maybe they like got hit by a bus when they were in college, so they got a big payout. Sorry. I mean
Vivian (31:24) I mean, maybe
Chelsea (31:26) you don't know.
Vivian (31:28) Okay, so you don't know what their financial situation is. They could be sitting on a, you know, treasure trove of
Chelsea (31:35) Of lawsuits
Vivian (31:37) Of lawsuits. so they don't have your time or your budget. And so just do what's what works for your small business. Number seven, the last one, okay. We're bringing up the rear with this.
Chelsea (31:49) Let's hear it
Vivian (31:50) Chasing the next big thing. if you are out here jumping on every new social media platform. if you're out here looking for every new AI tool and thinking that you have to do it, every new content trend, all right, every new marketing hack or viral strategy, if you are just jumping on these things because you're like, I just gotta do the new thing because it's the new thing, you're probably wasting money.
Chelsea (32:21) I thinking about this the other day. Specifically in terms of NFTs. yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you remember NFTs going out? They were like, sell, buy this is like the new crypto, and we're gonna exchange images as money and blah blah blah and all that stuff. Okay, all of that is not worth anything now.
Vivian (32:43) Pokémon is still around, just so y'all know.
Chelsea (32:47) You should have bought Pokemon cars instead of NFTs.
Vivian (32:51) Chelsea,
the one thing that when I was writing this one in particular, it reminded me because you are so passionate about this thing. You and you have mentioned this in previous episodes. Okay. sometimes our biggest enemy is not that we spend money, it's the fact that we don't give it time to work.
Chelsea (33:12) Yeah.
Vivian (33:13) You've said that before, plenty of times.
Chelsea (33:16) Mm. We we cannot expect marketing is a long term game. Yeah. We're we are not gonna turn ourselves around in thirty negative thirty days, you know? Yeah. You need to give these marketing initiatives time. You need to tweak them, you need to grow and build with them. Jumping on the new thing, there's always a new thing.
you're not being consistent enough because you're hopping from one thing to another. So it could be that these aren't NFTs and they're not gonna fail gloriously, but if you're spending twenty days on it and then jump the ship to the next shiny thing, you're not being consistent enough.
Vivian (34:00) there is in marketing there is this thing where you start to gain traction after a while. So maybe it seems at first you're like, I don't really know if this is gonna work, but then with enough time and because people are people are creatures of habit.
we see the same things over and over again and then creates a snowball effect and then suddenly the ad that you thought wasn't gonna work does suddenly work and is actually driving a lot of business. we do want you to always put an appropriate timeline to it or expectation, but you know, jumping from one thing to the next, you're not able to ever really tap into that exponential growth that does
Come with marketing over time. All right. So takeaway there.
Chelsea (34:49) Okay, takeaway.
Vivian (34:51) Sometimes the most expensive marketing decision is not what we are buying, but it's the fact that we stopped doing what we were doing because something new came along and we got the shiny thing syndrome Diverts our attention. And then we're like, let me drop this and start doing that. And then you're like,
Great, you're one month in. Yeah. And you didn't even give that thing time to work.
Chels, we don't want to tell people I mean, we try not to tell them just what to do, not not to do. Or or no we try not to get on to you guys about what you're doing. Okay.
Chelsea (35:28) We don't. No, I'm kidding.
Vivian (35:31) if you're like, yikes, I probably am wasting money on some of the things that they had listed, that's okay. what should you be spending on money on? Yeah. Okay.
Chelsea (35:44) What Vivian was trying to eloquently say is Yes, we told you all the things that you could be wasting your money on. Now we're gonna give you the flip side and what you could be spending your money on and what would be good financial decisions.
Vivian (35:57) the best way to do this is not to actually list out like tools or resources, but to give you guys categories, okay? Okay. If what you're spending money on meets any of these, then likely it is well worth every single dime. Okay.
Chelsea (36:13) Okay. So we're gonna gas you up now.
Vivian (36:15) Yeah, we're gonna gas you up to end it. Five
Chelsea (36:19) Have you ever said that before?
Vivian (36:20) What, gas you up? Yeah. No. okay. I mean you said it, so I said it.
Chelsea (36:25) No, no, no, and you used it correctly. That's why I was like, look at Vivian. Okay. But I guess I said it first. So You did. Okay, go ahead.
Vivian (36:31) I can put one and one together, two and two together. we're
Chelsea (36:34) Okay, what is that?
Vivian (36:35) gonna amp you up. We're gonna make you feel good about yourself. All right.
Chelsea (36:42) Okay.
Vivian (36:43) The five categories. number one, Chelsea. If it's something that is gonna save you a significant amount of time, okay, we want you spending money on that thing because you can divert the time that you save.
without sourcing that into another area of your small business. Or into maybe even resting, dare I say it? Some time off that you've earned.
Chelsea (37:10) Dreaming big here. A great example that I always bring up, Opus Clip.
Vivian (37:16) Yes.
Chelsea (37:16) We use Opus Clip, so it takes our long our long form videos of this podcast. It takes our podcast episodes and it creates short form content out of it. So it cuts it up into reels, TikToks, stuff like that. Not having to do that myself saves hours. Plural.
Vivian (37:36) And it gives us like twenty versions of it, so you can pick the one that you like best. You can actually go in and edit, but because it's done the bulk of it saves a lot of time.
Chelsea (37:45) It saves a lot of time. That is a hundred percent worth it. Another another category, Vivian, things you're actually good at measuring.
I love this one. Explain what we mean by that.
Vivian (37:59) If you can one hundred percent have a game plan for knowing if what you're investing money on or spending money on is a good investment or not, that's money well spent. Anytime that you go to sign up for a subscription or if you are going to try a new platform or commit your time to anything, we just want you to have some metrics in place or an idea of what you're gonna track in order
for you to be able to tell very quickly, yes, this is working or no, this is not working. I need to abandon it. Okay. So just if you're spending money on things that you're actually good at measuring, good for you. That's what we want for you. We just want you to know.
Chelsea (38:45) Yeah. That's so important. Please, please, please. Analytics is your best friend.
Vivian (38:50) what's another thing that you should be spending money on, Chels?
Chelsea (38:54) Vivian, you're never gonna believe this. things that help improve your customer experience.
Vivian (39:02) Yeah, it's shocking. I'm shocked.
Chelsea (39:04) No, seriously, like website improvements, better communication, making sure you have enough staff that they'll actually answer the phones, making it easier to purchase things, stuff like that, when you can alleviate the I don't wanna say the pain, but when you can alleviate pressure points from your customers that makes it easier for them to shop with you.
Vivian (39:30) lowering the probability of someone coming into your funnel and eventually walking away without experiencing your product or service, that's well worth it. Yeah. I agree with you. All right. So number four is gonna be also things that help you retain customers. We talked about potentially looking at repeat customers at established or existing customers.
marketing to them, having them come back through the door as a part of your customer experience. if you are spending any type of money on tools or, you know, functions on your website or whatnot that make it easier to bring these people back and turn them into repeat customers, we think that's money well spent. Okay. Cause that is actually converting into dollars in your pocket. And it's extremely valuable.
Chelsea (40:22) Last category, Vivian, we have things that help you reach the right people. Yes. You are not for everyone. Let your freak flag fly. That was a freak flag fly.
Vivian (40:35) That was a tongue twister.
Chelsea (40:37) It sure was. And you know what? I said it right the first time too.
Vivian (40:40) You did. Look at me. knocked it out of the park. Yeah.
Chelsea (40:43) I know
Vivian (40:43) The in this kind of is an extension of when we talk about you know, boosting post, you may be wasting money on that if it's not reaching the right segment of people, people that are actually interested in your product. Great, you're gonna get, you know, an extra two thousand views on it, but
If none of those people haters Yeah, if they're all hater puppies and none of them want to buy your product or service, then what good does it do you? on the flip side, the reason you have this suggestion under here is because if you're spending your money on things that are actually helping you narrow down that audience and tap into the people that are interested in your product and service, then great. That's money well spent. We love that for you.
Chelsea (41:31) Mm-hmm. So our final takeaway, Vivian, for this conversation is gonna be that we're not telling you to spend as little money as possible on your marketing. You it takes money to make money. We know marketing will cost money, I'm sorry. But however, the money that you are spending, we want to you guys to be really intentional and spend your money on things that you know are good marketing initiatives or good reasons for you to dole out that cash.
Vivian (42:04) can I add something in here now to re
Chelsea (42:07) No.
Vivian (42:09) to remind you guys that the amount of investment that you make in your marketing likely will change year to year and also with where you are in your business growth overall, okay? A business that is just starting out in years zero through two are likely not gonna be spending as much money as a business who's like in year five to seven, right? And the other part of it is the investments that they make in tools and resources in ads is gonna look different as well. I just say that to remind you we've we told you guys this entire discussion is not to say that individually these things are good or bad, but just to tell you that for each one, we want you to evaluate where you are with it because
That all shifts and changes as your small business grows.
Chelsea (43:00) So before you're spending money, we want you to ask yourselves these three questions. What am I trying to accomplish? One, how will I know if this worked? That's a big one.
Vivian (43:12) Metrics. Data, baby. We love it Chelsea just did the little what's that called? The fingers coming together, you guys. I'm forty something. I don't know what that means. You you youngins are doing this. Like claps. Sure. But like with finger baby finger claw crap claps.
Chelsea (43:29) Okay, so people aren't doing this anymore and for that reason right there. Because
Vivian (43:34) 'Cause we the 40 year olds ruined it.haha our evil plan is working
Chelsea (43:41) ok, What am I trying to accomplish? How will I know if this works? And lastly, is this the best use of my time and money right now?
Vivian (43:52) Yeah. And very important question. Let me just plug. good use of your time is listening to this podcast. Okay. Also, good use of your time is going to leave us a review. We love reading your commentary. You guys just tell us what you're thinking of of these topics and the episodes, the conversations that we're bringing to you because we wanna, you know, be here for a long, long time.
Chelsea (44:17) I'm gonna say another great use of your time and money would be joining the SOB community. Do it. Yes, because we have a Zoom call every single week where we talk about all of the new marketing updates. Like we get like day to day marketing updates. It's very brand new stuff. One or if you come on there and you have specific conversations you wanna have, you have very specific questions about your marketing.
Vivian (44:47) Ideas that you want to talk about
Chelsea (44:49) I'm glad I cut Vivian off.
Vivian (44:51) forty year olds, we ruin everything.
Chelsea (44:54) they Really do.
Vivian (44:55) with our sense of humor that you guys just aren't apparently humor is gone. We're not allowed to be funny anymore.
Chelsea (45:03) She's being very dramatic. Y'all go be the best SOBs you can be.