Did you know email marketing has an average 3600% ROI?
In this week’s episode of the Small Owned Business (S.O.B.) Marketing podcast, we are discussing marketing statistics that small business owners should know. From website design to user-generated content, we discuss why these statistics matter to small business owners and how to use the information to your advantage.
Which marketing statistic surprised you the most? Let us know in the comments!
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Chapters:
00:00 Thank You For Listening & Please Leave us a 5 Star Review
02:34 Marketing Statistics Small Businesses Should Know
04:07 Email Marketing Statistics
09:33 Consumers Prefer Email Marketing
14:39 Personalization in Email Marketing
17:52 Small Business Website Marketing Statistics
23:16 5 Second Rule for Website Marketing
29:20 Mobile Optimization for Websites
34:15 Content Marketing Statistics
37:45 Visual Social Media Content's Impact on Engagement
41:33 Trust in User-Generated Content vs. Traditional Advertising
49:05 The Rule of 7 in Marketing
56:47 Returning Customers vs. New Customers
58:24 The Paradox of Choice in Marketing
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Vivian: Marketing, at the end of the day, is nothing more than just building a relationship with someone. What makes someone really feel valued? Being seen.
*Intro* Chelsea: Hey everyone and welcome to the S.O.B. Marketing podcast. Where we celebrate to S.O.B. you are, and if you haven't figured it out yet - we mean Small Owned Business, we don't mean S.O.B...
Vivian: 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: Our commitment here at the S.O.B. Marketing podcast is to give you the real talk, what works when it comes to advertising, marketing, and promoting your business. And then what doesn't really work.
Vivian: And Chelsea and I promise to always keep the conversation real.
*Beginning of Episode*
Chelsea: Hey everybody and welcome back to the SOB Marketing Podcast. SOB as in Small Owned Business. We are not calling anyone names. Before we get started. Just want to remind everyone, if you're not following or subscribed, make sure you do that. Make sure you leave us a review. That helps us get in front of other small business owners. We're trying to build a cult here, a cult for good, of course.
Also, we want to do an episode in the future where we answer everyone's specific marketing questions. So if you have a marketing question, vague, specific, anything that you want to ask us, please email us at Help@TheSeasonedMarketer.com. You could also send us a DM on social media. You could leave it in the comments section, wherever you're listening or watching this, whatever works best for you guys. Just let us know what you want answered on the podcast.
Vivian: We already have one submission from a, of all things, from a elementary school librarian wrote in to ask us a question. So if you guys want to throw your name in the hat, your business in the hat, get a little shout out on the podcast. Also, you have two marketing professionals here who want to answer your nail biting question that you've been sitting on for a year or two. So go ahead and like Chelsea said, reach out to us, let us know.
Chelsea: Yeah. So Vivian, what are we talking about today?
Vivian: All right. So today we thought it would be good for us to bring some shocking statistics, marketing statistics to you guys because there is just a lot in the world of marketing that I think would surprise people if they slowed down and paid a little bit of attention. While Chelsea and I can appreciate that we live in this world, we eat, breathe and sleep marketing. As a small business owner, you got a lot of stuff going on. We just want to share some of these statistics that we think could potentially change the way you approach and view your marketing and the way you go about promoting your small business.
Chelsea: Yeah, and if you've listened to this podcast before, you have probably heard some of these statistics, but we are going to talk about them again and just explain why you should care as a small business owner.
Also, heads up, you guys, I am not going to be doing a TLDL section for this episode simply because we are just going through some statistics and talking about them. Not really something that I can sum up. So what I'm saying is you need to just listen to this episode all the way through.
Vivian: TLDL for those of you that may be new around these parts is too long, didn't listen. She usually recaps the episode at the very end in case you're in a hurry, but we're skipping that today because these are all stats. You need to know every single one of them. So listen to the entire episode. All right, Chelsea, let's get started by talking about our favorite thing in the whole world, which, if you've listened to us for some time, you know is email, email, email.
Chelsea: We really do talk about email marketing a lot. Yes, because it is a powerful marketing tool y'all.
Vivian: It is and it's the one thing you guys own. We always like to remind you: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok. We love that you are showing up on all of these channels, but just understand that one day if one of them gets banned, if one of them decides to pivot and you don't want to play the game anymore, you need to have an email list where you're taking people off platforms. Great, Instagram followers, you have 20 of them. Get a good portion of those 20 off of Instagram and tell them to sign up for your email list and that way you can message them as much as you want. Okay? You could keep them informed.
Chelsea: Well, I was going to say: this first statistic is why I care so much about email marketing.
Vivian: Okay, what is it? Give it to us.
Chelsea: So it's for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return on investment, the average ROI is $36. That is what? 3600% ROI.
Vivian: That's wild.
Chelsea: That's crazy.
Vivian: I mean, here's the interesting part. If you're wondering, if you're like "email marketing is free". Okay. That means you probably have not done email marketing, if you think it's free. You have to find a platform that you prefer and that you like. That platform can sometimes charge you by the amount of people you have on your email list. Like how many subscribers. For us, one of our favorites and the one that we've been using for years. We have a email list of over 1200 people. We've always used Flodesk. Part of that reason is because Flodesk charges me one monthly fee and it's not going to increase no matter how many people I add on there. So next year, in a couple months when you hear me talk about how we have over 2000 people on the email list, it's not going to change. The rate stays the same and that's what I like about it.
Chelsea: As opposed to, I have used MailChimp and I'm not bashing MailChimp. It was also a great platform to use. It does, the pricing varies by how many subscribers you have.
Vivian: Yes. I have also used MailChimp. So let's look at these numbers. If it's saying for every dollar spent on email marketing, the average return is $36. If I am an organization, a company that has over 100 email subscribers, MailChimp, let's say they charge me $1 per month whenever I send stuff out. That's what it's telling me. It's saying, hey, that $1, you're actually going to get back in return as Chelsea did her math, 3% ROI on that. So you're reaping more back as opposed to what you're dishing out to get that email out there.
I think especially as a small business owner, if you do go the way of like a Flodesk where they're charging you like $30, $20 a month, much more manageable, and that means that $20 a month, when you're sending it out, you're going to get back in return. Now granted, it's going to also depend on how good that email is.
Chelsea: Yes. This is an average.
Vivian: Yes. How good your email is and also that you're promoting some of your products and services, right? Or even if you're just staying top of mind, you're getting this back in some type of way, shape or form over that year.
Chelsea: Now, Vivian, let's say, and we've had this conversation before. You personally, as the small business owner, you don't like getting emails or you're Vivian and you have thousands of emails in your inbox that you've never opened.
Vivian: I would argue I really like getting emails. I sign up for every email list. I'm like put me on that list.
Chelsea: I still think that's not...Vivian's not your ideal emailer. Because you need to open the emails.
Vivian: No, but I do. I open the ones I want to read. Like, trust me, my inbox, does my inbox get flooded? Yeah. Do I open the emails I want to read? Yes. What causes me to open the email? A good heading, a good subject line. If it's from a person that's teaching me something or it's an intriguing topic, I do read this stuff. I read emails, so. Okay. So I am your ideal email customer.
Chelsea: Okay, my bad. My point being, a lot of people say, well, I don't read my emails or I don't like receiving emails, so I'm not going to do email marketing. No, you are not your consumer. You are not your target audience. My next statistic, 60 % of consumers prefer to be contacted by brands through email. Okay, so there's facts behind this. People like receiving emails from brands.
Vivian: Well, and I think...the one thing I would urge you to do is if you haven't started an email list because your mindset is that email is outdated, I just want to challenge you to dive deep into why you think that. Is it because you yourself are not using it? Then to Chelsea's point, you may be your target customer, you may not. But the thing is, you can't just base things off of, well, I don't do this. Okay, great. Well, there's an entire other world out here and majority wins, okay? If most of your customers will open an email, then you should have an email list. Because that's easy money where you guys have people that are tuned in saying, want to hear from you. Great. They may want to know what your special is. They may want to know the new product that you just released. I do think it's a big one. I love that you threw that in there because sometimes just challenge your beliefs of what you think people are doing every day. Go out there and look for the data. Most of the time there are tons of companies that go out there and do whether it's surveys, focus groups. I actually used to work for a market research company. Y'all hands down, one of the funnest jobs I had because every day was just so freaking different, okay? There are companies that will pay. Coca-Cola used to pay this market research firm I worked for, good money to have me call people in the evening and say, hey, do you want to come out here and try some new Coke products for a hundred bucks, for your time. They're like, "hell yeah I'll do it sign me up", and our job was to look for a variety of people so you had the demographics. You had all of those data points to tell you exactly what you're saying here. Companies know, they have a pulse yes customers are wanting.
Chelsea: A little side tangent yeah and did you ever do studies while you were in college?
Vivian: What do you mean? Like, did I participate?
Chelsea: Did you participate in the studies?
Vivian: I did, but I did them for the university, which was different.
Chelsea: That's what I was talking about. It's always different, but that was big for the business school. I had teachers who would give you extra credit, and you'd get actual money from just doing these little, they weren't surveys. They were like research studies. But it was research studies specifically with like a consumer in mind.
Vivian: Yeah, so a lot of it, the ones that I did were psychology based. Okay, so basically they would have the students in the room and then they would give them stuff. You never knew what the study was actually about. You just had to follow instructions and then you get compensated either through extra credit or money or whatever it was. But they were interesting because I think that's the only way you really are going to get to understand what people are truly wanting. It's one thing we all know, yeah, you could fill out a survey. Y'all be some little liars out there, telling these surveys incorrect things, things you actually don't do and actually don't believe. I do like the ones that are more case study-like. That's why I loved at the market research firm, because I would have a hand in not just recruiting the people, but part of my responsibility, especially when I wanted that money and I needed more hours, is I would actually go in and set the room up. The focus groups for let's say like these Coke products, when they were trying new flavors and stuff, they would have a moderator in the room and there was an actual, what do you call it? Mirrored wall. So you couldn't see the person behind it, but their execs would sit on the other end so they could see how people were reacting to stuff. I love that you threw this statistic in there because sometimes you guys, the stuff we think to be true is not actually what people are telling us they want. So they want emails from you guys.
Chelsea: Also, a really great point of when we're giving you guys these statistics, like it comes from research.
Vivian: We're not going to be telling you guys what our preferences are. We're trying to give you something based in fact.
Chelsea: Unless you're doing these surveys and lying, guys.
Vivian: Don't be a little liars please.
Chelsea: So our next statistic for email Vivian, I love so much because it just part of the times this is so accurate for you know, 2025, the 2020s, that sort of thing.
Personalized emails deliver six times higher transaction rates.
Yes. Reminder, guys, when we say personalization, we don't mean hi [insert name].
Vivian: Then you actually insert name, right?
Chelsea: And then actually insert the name. Please don't do your customers wrong. Like I've been wronged.
Vivian: Like you've been wronged in the past. Well, and the personalization, such a timely topic because we have covered this in previous podcast episodes. What personalization means in 2025 as opposed to what it meant in like 2015. But it is something where if you think about marketing at the end of the day, you guys, is nothing more than just building a relationship with someone. What makes someone really feel valued? Being seen. Okay, so when you're personalizing, quote unquote, these emails, meaning you have any data on your customers, okay, then someone signs up for your email list. You are able to, because you are organized on the backend and you've actually developed these little groups, you've segmented your audience on the back end with email. This is the group of people that bought a home decor thing. This is a group of people that bought candles. This is a group...Then if I know that you like my dough bowl candles, okay, and for you guys that don't know, in the South, that's a big thing. We basically take a nice little dough bowl and we pour candle wax in there. So then when the candle's done, you have a little decorative bowl that you can use for stuff, okay?
Chelsea: I have never heard of that. So even if you are in the South, it's okay if you didn't know that.
Vivian: What???
Chelsea: No, I've never seen that.
Vivian: Our friend, down at Cotton Down South sells, that's what she's known for. She sells a ton of them. She makes her own. Anyways.
Chelsea: Well, I'm shopping for other things besides candles. Okay? So I never noticed that because she's good at personalization.
Vivian: There you go. Well, here's the thing with something like that, if I know that's what you're interested in, hey, I just have a new scent that I released, who do you think is more primed to buy that?
Chelsea: Not Chelsea.
Vivian: Not Chelsea, it's the people that actually have bought a candle before. So who am I going to send that information to? I think that's where this personalization, it helps you save money because, I always think of marketing as trying really, really hard. The better you are at it, the better you're going to narrow down that gap of the money you're spending going to people that don't or aren't interested.
Vivian: Or just your time. You're not investing. Well, and time is money, y'all. You guys are busy. So even saving yourself that time is a big deal. Okay, Vivian. So we have websites. Do you want to give the first?
Vivian: Yes. Let me just remind you guys, the first statistic is what we're calling a three-click rule. Consumers should be able to find what they're looking for on your website within three clicks.
Chelsea: Which Vivian, I don't know if you've seen the debate on this. When I was doing research for this episode deciding which statistics we should bring.
I actually found out that this has been debunked.
Vivian: What do you mean?
Chelsea: So it's less about the clicks and more about clarity and ease of use. So it's not necessarily that...because the rule is saying if someone has to click more than three times, they're going to lose interest and just leave your website. Well, the new concept is it's not necessarily three clicks. It's just that if your website's complicated, if they can't find what they're looking for easily, and there's not clarity and an organized system within your website, then people are going to leave.
Vivian: I'm going to be honest with you, this sounds like a very Gen Z thing to say. I'm not attacking you. I'm attacking the people who are debunking this. Okay? I understand what they're saying. Maybe to their point, they are correct because who knows how we came up with this statistic when someone wrote, you have three clicks before someone jumps off of your website. I do wonder what data they were actually looking at. And I'm guessing that part of that data was with the bounce rate. So I understand they probably looked at that and they probably looked at like how long people are on the site and this and that. But I do think that there is something to the fact that if I have to do more than like, if I go onto your website and I'm specifically looking for a product, I'm going to buy a t-shirt, think of how, in your experience, how this has played out on most online shops. You get on the website, there's the homepage, you go to apparel, you go to t-shirts, there's a filter, men's, women's, children, you select women's, that's three.
That's three right there. I found what I needed. I'm not going to invest more time than like three clicks to find a woman's t-shirt that I want. Right. So I stick by my initial thing. It sounds very...
Chelsea: Well, and I still wanted to bring this because like you've just explained, like I think it's still a good rule of thumb. I still think if you can find a way to make everything within three clicks, you probably want to do that.
Vivian: I get it, if it's not exactly three clicks, but you have a nice website, it's organized, it's user friendly, people can find the information they're looking for. I get it. Maybe I'll give you four.
Chelsea: Yeah. Well, that's what I was about to say. You know, three, four, five. When you get to like 16, there's a problem. People are going to bounce off.
Vivian: I do also like that we had this discussion and you mentioned that it was debunked because just a friendly reminder that as technology evolves, as consumer preferences change, marketing shifts. Hopefully that is part of the reason that you have subscribed to this marketing podcast because you need a place to be able to go just to have the conversations of like, has that changed any or are we still doing that thing, right? I love that there is a discussion around this because people change over time, the way we consume things and also our patience for stuff changes. I mean, you guys, if you would have asked me back when I was graduating college in 2005, to sum up anything in three seconds that I had to have a quote unquote three second hook for anything. You would have blown my mind. I would have been like, what the F are you talking about, three seconds? That's not enough time to do anything. But we are now in a society where we're consuming so much short video that people are like, you have three seconds to get this person hooked onto your reel, onto your TikTok video. Great, okay, I can't even open my mouth in three seconds.
Chelsea's like, okay, that was an unnecessary rant.
Vivian: Well, I think that that last part was a bit dramatic. You can open your mouth.
Vivian: *in fake slow motion* No, I can't. I just did a real life slow motion.
Chelsea: Okay, so next stat. It's the five second rule, which has, from my understanding and my research, not been debunked. Okay, and I'm not surprised at all. People should understand what your website is about in five seconds or they're going to bounce. They're going to leave. I want to clarify.
Vivian: What else are they going to, bounce?
Chelsea: Well, no, I just...real quick, everyone. If you don't know what a bounce rate is, it's basically how quickly someone leaves your website. So in the website, I don't know, community, world. In the website world, we use the phrase bounce.
Vivian: This is a good time to bring up, if you have a website as a small business owner, please know where you can find the analytics. If you had someone build out your website and so you don't have access to it, ask them for access to it. As the website owner and business owner, we want you to be able to take these data points and make good decisions based off of the data you're seeing. Like what Chelsea's saying, if you go under your analytics and you notice that you have a high bounce rate. Usually it will tell you how many seconds before somebody leaves off of the website. If it's like one second, two seconds, then you know that there's probably some work you can do to that homepage. What is it missing that's keeping people on here? Just a little teaser, we're hoping eventually in the next couple of months to have somebody that is a website designer by trait and that can speak to some of these tips and recommendations because we do think that social media platforms are wonderful, but your website is your real estate, your online real estate. We want you to have your own place.
Chelsea: But again, this statistic is just about, again, it's ease of use and it is clarity. This made me think of Vivian, do you remember websites from the 2000s?
Vivian: Yes, and the bad ads and stuff that were on there.
Chelsea: It makes me think of old 2000s websites where I specifically think of hot pink color, like font color on a yellow background.
Vivian: It has some background music playing or something. Interesting. One of the shout out to one of my favorite podcasts, The Big Flop. I just found this a couple months ago and I love just listening to their conversations. The last one I listened to was actually about Napster. Do you remember Napster?
Chelsea: I don't know what that is.
Vivian: You don't know what Napster is?
Chelsea: No.
Vivian: So basically it's like-
Chelsea: I've heard the name before. I don't know what it is.
Vivian: Before Spotify, we used to illegally download songs to burn CDs and...
Chelsea: I used to do that but I didn't use...
Vivian: You used Limewire.
Chelsea: No. I used MP3 download or something like that.
Vivian: Well, it was something similar but it was the first one to do it, Napster was. They did this whole discussion and it got me in my early 2000 feels where I was in there thinking, man, the stuff we used to do for music. Being willing to go to jail. It was a whole thing. But what the main takeaway from that entire episode that I loved and it had me connect the dots was, basically they were Spotify before Spotify. If they had just been able to stay in business and connect those dots with the subscription base. They would have been super successful because that's what Spotify did. So yes, early 2000 websites.
If you guys are listening and you had a favorite back in the day, a favorite website that you loved going to, let us know in the comments. I want to, I want a little throwback here. I want to look stuff up.
Chelsea: Now I thought you were about to say, if you had a favorite website to legally download music on. Were you a Limewire girl or a Napster girlie?
Vivian: Do tell us. I'm not going to turn you guys into the government or to Metallica. One of the biggest naysayers for Napster was actually, I think the drummer or guitarist from Metallica.
Chelsea: I don't remember which one, but I know what you're talking about.
Vivian: I won't tattle on you guys. Tell us, were you Limewire girly or were you a Napster? Or Chelsea's MP3download.com?
*S.O.B. Community Ad*
Chelsea: I once worked with an ad agency where I had to go through and revise all their work because it would be laden with misspellings and wrong information. We were spending thousands of dollars for me to do double the work.
Vivian: Sometimes, you don’t need an ad agency - you just need resources to figure it out on your own.
Chelsea: That’s why we created the S.O.B. Community - for the small business owners who want to keep their marketing in house but still need some support.
Vivian: Get templates, courses, downloads, expert advice, weekly live calls, and a supportive group of small business owners - for just $50/month!
So head over the skool.com/sob. That's s-k-o-o-l.com/sob, all lowercase. Join today and feel confident in your marketing.
*End of S.O.B. Community Ad*
Chelsea: This next one makes perfect sense. If anything, I think, well, actually, no, it makes sense because of the word "over". Mobile users account for over 50% of global website traffic.
I was about to say 50% honestly feels kind of low to me. But when you say "over", like how much over? Is it 5% or like 20%?
Vivian: True. I do have in my notes, because this is the figure that I found, same exact thing, quote, the vast majority of the world's internet users, 95.9% use a mobile phone to go on to at least some of the time. So mobile phones now account for 62% of the world's web traffic. So couple takeaways for you as a small business owner. If you know this, that over half of the people that visit your website are going to be looking at it. 62% are going to be looking at it on this teeny tiny device, be sure that your website is actually designed for that. There is these website builders these days or people, if you have outsourced your website design to somebody, just be sure that you're asking them and say like, hey, is it mobile friendly also? There is a wonderful tool in Google where you can check this. You can check to see if your website is mobile friendly.
*Update*
Chelsea: Real quick update y'all. Unfortunately Google actually retired their mobile friendly testing tool back in December of 2023. However, Vivian and I found another free tool that you guys can use to test how mobile friendly your website is from Experte. I will be adding that link in the description notes so go check that out, and go make sure your website is mobile friendly.
*Back to Episode*
Vivian: Design wise, you want to be sure of that. Also outside of just websites, if you guys are using something like a Canva or we use liinks, L-I-I-N-K-S.co.
What we use that for is, you know, on Instagram, when you say link in bio or something like that, because we have so many different resources, we have quizzes, we have courses, we have an email you can sign up for, we have a podcast. I had to come up with a way to design it to where it was a little easier than just sending them to the website and having them poke around in there. So I use that links.co to be able to nicely format it and have it show up on a mobile device and literally they could just click on it.
Chelsea: Yeah, so we're limiting it to only two clicks instead of three.
Vivian: Yeah, instead of like five. Something similar would be like a stand store. You guys may have seen a lot of Instagram users using that as well, but all of those are mobile friendly. I love, just as a reminder, whatever you guys are doing, be sure that it looks okay when people pull it up on their phone.
Chelsea: Absolutely. A lot of these website platforms already do it for you, but I still want you to double check. Okay, and that's from experience. When I worked in healthcare, I would always double check the website on mobile because, the banner I'd have at the top, not always fitting correctly on mobile.
Vivian: Yeah, and it does this weird thing where it will minimize stuff. Same thing, I know we're talking about websites specifically, same thing on your emails, you guys. We have a client that we do emails for and on the platform that they use, that she prefers, at the top you can easily toggle between mobile view and email view. I like doing that because when I'm changing fonts or I'm changing font size or when I'm looking at it in the email on my desktop, and I'm like I want to put a new paragraph here. It doesn't look the same on your mobile device. Sometimes it gives you these weird quirky, you'll have too much space in between paragraphs and all this. I make it a habit now to look at it on both devices because I don't want it to be funky.
Chelsea: Yeah. Just double check everything.
Vivian: So now we are moving on to content. Content marketing. Can we start now with a conversation we just had in our sob community yesterday? For those of you that aren't aware, we have a membership community. Fifty dollars a month. We hop on weekly calls and we just talk about all things marketing. Our community members can bring marketing questions, initiatives, ideas to the table and we talk about it as a group. It's a lot of fun. So the interesting thing that we just talked about yesterday on our community call was we were talking about how Chat GPT just hit 1 billion searches. Daily searches. The surprising statistic about this was when it comes to web searches, you would think one billion is a lot. It's not. Guess who's still reigning king?
Chelsea: Well, I know the answer. It's Google.
Vivian: Yeah. When we looked at the graph and we shared it in the community where it laid out all of the platforms. Google was still at the very top and it was by a long shot. ChatGPT was like fifth from the bottom with a ton, including Snapchat in between there. Snapchat was one of the top five.
Chelsea: Yes. Okay. Y'all. So it went Google, Instagram. This graph was specifically amount of daily searches.
Vivian: So where people are going to just search things.
Chelsea: Just search things. So Google, Instagram, a Chinese browser. Yes. And then Snapchat.
Vivian: Who of you out there are using this Chinese browser?
Chelsea: Well, I feel like it's the Chinese.
Vivian: I know who it is. I'm just saying.
Chelsea: Okay. Snapchat was fourth. After our community call Vivian, I have a friend who's staying with us at the moment and I live with my significant other.
The three of us were just talking about who is searching things on Snapchat.
Vivian: Did you guys figure it out?
Chelsea: No, we still want to know. You can search things on Snapchat. Yes. Who's doing that? What are you searching?
Vivian: If you're using Snapchat to search stuff, tell us in the comments. What are you searching? Product, services, statistics, hopefully not political stuff.
But I bring that up because for me, we're coming off of this discussion with statistics for website and then we're moving into content marketing. It kind of meshes both worlds together, Chat GPT does. So I think this was one of the more surprising things for me. Where it was just the realization that for as much talk as we're doing about chat GPT, it still is in its infancy as far as people using it. I think that's great to some extent and it's probably not great to another extent, but just keep that in mind because that means that as the years progress for your small business, you probably have ample opportunities that are going to be popping up with that.
Chelsea: Okay, so this next statistic, Vivian, I think everyone doesn't specifically know, but they know. You know?
Vivian: What do we know? What do we know? Tell me.
Chelsea: Visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media. Girl, at this point, who is sharing content that doesn't have visual content?
Vivian: I mean, I can't answer that, but I'm sure there are some people out there.
Chelsea: I can see like a grandma updating her Facebook posts, just like typing something out. But businesses? No one's just doing a text post. On most of these platforms you can't just do a text post.
Vivian: Yeah, true. I was going to say you could do a graphic in Instagram that's got text on it, but it's still a graphic.
Chelsea: Now you could obviously in your story you can just type something out or something like that, but most of the time we're always adding visuals to our content at this point.
Vivian: Yeah, you know what kind of this reminds me of even? I'm assuming and I shouldn't that as a small business owner, maybe you guys are doing Instagram to some extent, okay?
So either you're doing it for your business or perhaps you have an intern or perhaps you have someone on the team that you said, hey, you handle all of our Instagram stuff. As Instagram has evolved and we're getting more and more of these tips, I see a lot of people saying stuff like this, like this is how powerful visual is. They're saying in order to keep people engaged on a reel, that they recommend you talk about something, but you're actually doing something else. So you're not doing the thing you're talking about, right? Because visually it keeps your attention no matter really what you're saying.
So what this looks like is when you've seen a lot of these like, ready with me tutorials popping up and stuff, it's because the person is actively working towards a goal, right? Getting their face ready for the day. You're looking at it and you're watching them, you know there's a process, right? There's some type of satisfaction you get out of watching them complete this process. Perhaps they're not even talking about the makeup they're putting on. They're telling you a story of something that happened yesterday, right? Like a bird crapping on their car.
Chelsea: I have a Gen Z example that you're going to hate. What's that? I don't know the game, but it's the game where you're collecting the coins and you're moving between buses and stuff. Gen Z does this a lot. They upload a video of them talking, but the visual is them playing this game.
Vivian: Playing a video game?
Chelsea: Yeah. So it's like gameplay. Yes. But they're talking about something important.
Vivian: Gotcha. The reason I brought that up is just to play into what Chelsea's statistic was, which was visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media. When we talk about the power of seeing something, I just think that speaks volumes, right? It doesn't matter, like we're saying, it doesn't have to necessarily match the audio all the time, right? It's just that our eyes, we're able to, in some weird way, compartmentalize what we're seeing through our eyes and what we're hearing through our ears, but not mesh them. They don't have to be meshed, right? They don't have to match sometimes.
Chelsea: Vivian, I love this next statistic because I think it really shows where we are and where we've progressed in the marketing world. 92% of consumers trust user generated content more than traditional advertising.
Vivian: So break this down, remind people the difference between traditional advertising and user generated content.
Chelsea: Yeah. So traditional advertising is going to be the business telling you the consumer about their business and why you want to buy it. Buy the product or use the service, whatever it is. User generated content is exactly what it sounds like. It's the consumer saying, hey, I visited this business, I got this product, and this was my experience. So think your reviews, your testimonials. Influencer marketing. Those videos that you see of people saying "I bought the viral blah blah blah", I don't know, the viral lipstick and look how good it looks. Or I visited this coffee shop for the first time and let me tell you my experience. That is user generated content. Again, 92 % of consumers trust it over traditional marketing. It makes perfect sense because you're seeing actual people like you experiencing the brand and you get to know what their experience was.
Vivian: Well, and I love this because there's also this thing where businesses are catching on to this and they understand the statistic in real life, where they're starting to put money towards it. So instead of doing like a traditional print ad for a restaurant, what I've seen, there's a guy here in 843 area code in Charleston. He basically, he's so funny, all right? He will go out there and he's like, your boy's out here at so-and-so restaurant or whatever. So he's known, he's grown a TikTok audience and an Instagram audience and people like watching his videos because he literally will say the funniest stuff. He goes to the restaurants. He'll shoot video, show his meal, all that stuff. He'll give you a review, wall cracking jokes and all this stuff, right?
There was a, I forgot the name of it. There's a coffee shop that opened up in Mount Pleasant that I want you and I to go to. It's really cutesy. They give these little ducks in their like matcha tea and stuff. It's very cute.
Chelsea: I thought you were going to say the bookstore.
Vivian: No, I do want to go to the bookstore.
Chelsea: The one that is also a coffee shop and a wine bar. Oh my God, I want to go there too. Okay, as soon as we go to both of these places, we will share on our Instagram and stuff. So go make sure you're following us on Instagram.
Vivian: So what was interesting is I saw that this coffee shop was, they had asked people to come out and I don't know if they're doing it through like compensation monetary wise or if they're just doing it through like free coffee and pastries or something like that.
But they got him out there. He was one of the people that they got out there and his video just stood out compared to the rest of them, because the rest of them are like, you know, sweet girls coming up. They're like, look how cute, aesthetically pleasing this is. He's just up there like, I've never had coffee before. How many shots of espresso is that? He's in there trying all these different drinks. It was the best video. Well worth whatever this business promised him whether it was a little bit of money or if it was, he might be charging something. It was well worth it because that video alone probably got a lot of eyeballs on that new business. So I love that people are leveraging this.
Chelsea: Yes, which comes into influencer marketing. As small business owners, y'all. I don't want you to count out influencer marketing because let's be honest, you're not going to get Kim Kardashian to come out to your coffee shop probably. But a micro influencer, someone like Vivian's saying, someone who's well known in the Lowcountry and the Charleston area, that's not out of your reach. That's something that you can do.
Vivian: Can I throw in there this statistic, which matches what you're saying? So yours was very specific. It said 92 % of consumers trust user generated content over traditional advertising. That was very specific. The one that goes way further into what you just said is according to Matter Findings, 69 % of consumers trust influencers, friends, and family over information coming directly from the brand. So the number changes because it's now broadening it to family and friends and all this. To your point, I think what I just want to reiterate, you just said, if you guys have a small budget, if you're a new business and you're like, I just need to get the word out there about my grand opening. I need to let people know. Micro influencers are the way to go because this right here is telling you people already are more prone to saying, let me trust someone that's got following of 20, 10. Micro-influencers now, you can even do 3, 5. It leverages their audience. As long as it's the right audience, the people that you're looking to tap into, I mean, that's what you want. Hyper specific, right?
Chelsea: So basically if you have a ribbon cutting here in the low country or South Carolina area, you can ask Vivian and I to come.
Vivian: Yes, we'd be more than happy to.
Chelsea: All I need is maybe a glass of bubbly and then I'm good. I will show up.
Vivian: Which we can travel with bubbly, our own bubbly in our purses.
Chelsea: Yes, absolutely. Just give me a glass to pour it in. I am not above drinking it out of the bottle either.
Vivian: The key here is just invite us to your grand opening.
Chelsea: Just invite us and we'll show up.
Vivian: Love it. Before we move past this particular statistic, can we also lean into, if you're someone that's like, I'm not going be doing user generated content. I'm not going to be doing micro influencers. Great.
Chelsea: Which is valid. I mean, if that's what you want to do with your brand.
Vivian: This tells you though, what is going to work really, really well. Testimonials and reviews. Google reviews, whatever reviews you are using to put out there. People are trusting other people's experiences more than they're trusting your paid advertising. That's the key benefit of this. That's why we wanted to share that.
Chelsea: Which, just letting you know, reviews and testimonials are still user-generated content. Just saying. But if you don't want to do the other stuff, we get it. We get it.
So Vivian, I now have some random one-offs, statistics and rules that I still wanted us to talk about, but I didn't have a way to organize. The rule of seven, and we've brought this up so many times on this podcast. Consumers need to see or hear your marketing messaging at least seven times before we take action.
Now, usually, Vivian, when we talk about this rule, we say seven to eight, right? We say it takes seven to eight touch points before someone's going to be willing to make a purchase from you, before someone's willing to take action. I wanted to bring this in here because this is a very important marketing rule because it helps put things in perspective. Marketing is a long game. You are not going to be able to show someone one ad and get them to make a purchase. It doesn't work like that.
Vivian: Well, and I think at its core, marketing has always been like that. Maybe it's just because our attention span has decreased. It's getting super busy. Even when I think about old school wise, when I first got in the marketing game and we were doing anything from like direct mail, AKA postcards or we were doing billboard advertising or we were doing radio advertising. Funny fact here, you guys, I actually worked for a radio station selling radio advertising. Okay. So talk about knowing the backend of stuff. We were told and we understood that we couldn't tell someone just run one ad, just run an ad for a week.
That's too short of a time. You need to get some type of like schedule going because it does require, even back then it required that people listen to things day in and day out, which is where some of these opportunities came up from. If you remember listening on the radio to like the weather segment. "Your weather update sponsored by." I mean, why do you think that came up? It's because they understood, hey, if we get a sponsor for this particular segment, the more hits that we get on that, it's going to stay with people. They're going to get more business out of it. They're going to want to come back and keep advertising with us. They're incentivized to set you up for success because that means money in their pocket too. Marketing, I say all that to say marketing has always been like this, but I think now it's just, it requires more consistency and frequency because of just how much is out there.
Chelsea: I'm glad you said how much is out there too, because I was going to stand up for us. Because as a Gen Z-er, don't get me wrong.
Vivian: Stand up for you and your crew. This does not involve me.
Chelsea: No, just in general. Yes, our attention span has definitely shortened. You know, Vivian, I've had...
Vivian: I feel like you're about to confess something that's not good.
Chelsea: I've been asking my friends, do you think I could write a book? Right. I had, my best friend, Maya, she's like, absolutely. You'd write an amazing book. Tim and my other best friend, Bri, both said, absolutely not. You couldn't do it because you don't have the attention span or the patience to write an entire book. Yes, I'm aware of that. In my defense, there's a lot of stuff out there now. It's not only just that people's attention spans have shrunk, it's that we are constantly being bombarded with content of businesses that I don't want to say are like you, but like everyone's trying to pitch their business to someone constantly, right? So, getting one eyeball one time, one ad, is not going to be enough for me to remember you.
Vivian: Yeah, and we're going to sound like little conspiracy theorists here, but let me put my little tin foil hat on and tell you guys something, all right? Chelsea and I, another thing we mentioned in our SOB community yesterday, that was an interesting statistic. You know when you guys are scrolling through Instagram or YouTube, whatever it is, you're using these platforms to try to promote your small business. You're like, great, views are a big thing. All right, even something as small as this, views used to be counted as someone watching your video for three seconds. Guess what it's been knocked down to?
Chelsea: One second.
Vivian: One second across all these platforms, except for YouTube Shorts. And there was one other one that was three seconds. I can't remember.
Chelsea: LinkedIn, I think.
Vivian: Yes, LinkedIn. Okay, so what this means, if you guys don't think that these platforms are setting us up for dopamine hit after dopamine hit after dopamine hit, why would you lower the amount of time they're requiring for it to count as a view? Because they want you to feel like your stuff is getting viewed and looked at because what's that going to do? It's going to force you or make you want to create more content because you're like, look at how well this reel did. Look at how well this video did. All right. We're little dopamine monkeys at this point. Okay. Which is why I make it a point to be depressed for like 10 minutes out of every day. Okay. Because I'm not getting sucked into this. All right. I have my daily 10 minute depression.
Chelsea: Okay. I think Vivian's me today. I think Vivian's me today. I mean, first off, you're an all black. I've got like light blue on.
Vivian: Oh, I feel like we just did a version of a Freaky Friday. Maybe we changed bodies.
Chelsea: Who knows? We know each other well enough that we'd be able to pull it off.
Vivian: Probably. You know what I'm going to do since I'm Chelsea, I'm going go write that book. I'm going to write it for you. Don't worry. I got you.
Chelsea: Thanks. I appreciate that.
All right, so all of that to just say, we don't want you guys getting down in the dumps, even though I do think you should spend 10 minutes being depressed today. We don't want you getting down in the dumps about it taking seven times for somebody to actually take action on your stuff. Just understand the way of the world now and you get it because you're living in it. There's so much, whether it's through Google or through the streaming services or it's on podcasts or it's, we are just getting hit from every direction with stuff. Sometimes that Facebook ad isn't going to convert to a sale if someone sees it just one time. Sometimes they need to see it three times. Sometimes it needs to be seven. Sometimes I've also heard this too. Great, you see their Facebook ad, maybe they see you then on Instagram through a reel. Maybe then they see you on a digital ad when they're looking for something on Google. It's got to be like omni-channel, right? Not just on one platform, but they're seeing you throughout the day in different ways.
Chelsea: Yes. Okay. So this next statistic, we did an entire podcast episode on, but if you're new here, we're going to remind everyone. It costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.
Vivian: Big, big stat because the, I think once you let this settle in, and you think about it and you accept it with open arms, you come to recognize that, A, you've been making your life a little harder than you had to because maybe you're just not tapping into people that have already bought from you. We get it. There are two pipelines going into your small business. One of those pipelines is going to be new customers. You always have to have new customers coming in, but there's also that other pipeline that runs underground. That one is the one of existing customers, the people that you don't have to convince that you're cool and that your product or service works because they've experienced it once before. So the pitch to them is a lot different and can be shorter because they already know, like, and trust you.
Chelsea: Yes. You summed that up perfectly.
Vivian: Awesome. that's what I'm here for.
Chelsea: It's almost like you know...
Vivian: It's almost like I'm you all of a sudden. Is that what you were about to say?
Chelsea: I was going to say it's almost like you know marketing, but you know what? Yeah, it's almost like you're me.
Vivian: Yeah, remember I'm Chelsea today.
Chelsea: Okay, last statistic, Vivian, is my favorite just because it gets me in my college feels.
The paradox of choice. Do you remember this lesson?
Vivian: I mean, my memory doesn't go back that far like yours does. Go ahead. If you guys wonder why we're always joking about time, Chelsea's 15 years younger than me. I feel like she's always razzing me about it.
Chelsea: Well, to make you feel better. The other day I was watching a reel on Instagram and this girl said, I graduated some time ago, you know, it's been a while. And then she said she graduated in 2021. I'm like, that is not some time ago. Okay, as someone who graduated in 2019, I feel like I just graduated. What are you talking about?
Vivian: I graduated in 2005 and I still feel like that.
Chelsea: Okay. The paradox of choice was a marketing 101 lesson. The first marketing class I took. I credit it as the reason I decided to make marketing my major.
Vivian: Really? It's a core memory?
Chelsea: Yeah, it's a core memory. That class, I loved so much. I was like, you know what? I don't want to do international business. So I changed it to marketing. My minor was going to be political science, and I was like, forget that. We're going all in. I did project management, but it was specifically like this lesson. I remember just being so blown by one, how important psychology is in marketing. Two, just how much goes into you needing to know your consumer. Let me actually say what it is. So the paradox of choice is basically the explanation that offering too many options can overwhelm and reduce conversions. So if you have too many, in my marketing class, we did ice cream. So if you have like 30 different ice cream flavors at that point, people are just not going to buy any ice cream because they can't make a decision. If you offer five or six, now they feel more comfortable with, okay, I can narrow it down to one thing from six different options and they're more willing to make a choice.
Vivian: Yeah, I love this. We have talked about this in a previous podcast. I can't remember which one, but y'all just go binge off them. Why not? You're here, you've got time. Just go ahead and binge them all. There was one where we talked about how I feel overwhelmed when I go to, what's that restaurant?
Chelsea: Is it the Cheesecake Factory?
Vivian: Yes, the Cheesecake Factory. Why is your menu 50 pages long?
Chelsea: But you know what? I feel like the Cheesecake Factory is an outlier because people love the Cheesecake Factory.
Vivian: They do, but you know what I'd be curious to find out, and maybe I'll research this. I want to see how much money they actually make, like in comparison to other restaurants. I'd be curious to see who's more quote unquote successful, because it doesn't make sense to me. When I go there, I mean, it kind of does in the sense that let's say we're having 10 people eat dinner. Each one of those 10 people, one wants Asian, one wants Italian, okay great, Cheesecake Factory can suit all those needs. Accommodate. But I literally break out in hives when I'm there and I'm like, I don't. I'm like, it's too much, it's too overwhelming.
I think that's where I love that you brought this up with the paradox of choice just because sometimes if you're finding in your small business that you are like, I need to have an option for everything. Maybe you don't. Maybe you pair down your options. I'll tell you where I have seen this personally in something we've done lately. We have merch, if you guys don't know, we have merch. So you can get a coffee mug, you can get a trucker hat, you can get a hat that says SOB and it says small owned business, okay? So people don't think you're calling yourself a son of a bitch.
Chelsea: Isn't that so fun when they see SOB first? Then they read it, yeah, go buy merch.
Vivian: Yeah. So we have that. We have two other designs, another one, small business baddie. When I was looking through it, I was like, we have too many options. I just needed to not do some of these t-shirt styles and just offer one t-shirt style men, one women. That's it.
So I've had this discussion with myself as a marketing professional where I was like, you know what, just streamline it and then go from there because really at the end of the day and maybe just offer some of the basic colors you want to offer and that's it.
Chelsea: Another example, coffee shops, milk. Girl, when I go to a coffee shop, first off, I shouldn't be getting coffee. So I'm already feeling kind of guilty, right? Cause I'm like, I'm going to be so messed up for the rest of the day, but let's do this.
Then they say, what kind of milk do you want? We have whole milk and 2% and oat milk and coconut milk and I'm like, please stop.
Vivian: Just go with whole milk every time.
Chelsea: I'm not going to lie. If they say coconut milk, I get coconut milk.
Vivian: Really? I'd love me some whole milk.
Chelsea: I mean, that's fine, too. Again, I'm not getting coffee.
Vivian: Well, lucky for you since today is our version of Freaky Friday and you're me today. You can have caffeine, so go get you a whole thing of coffee, girl. All right, guys, so we hope that this episode has been super useful. That's all of the marketing statistics we think are super important for you to digest, understand and know because it can help change your perspective and the way that you approach your marketing.
Other than that, just a friendly reminder, y'all, please, if you like this episode, go listen to a few of our others or share this with your small business bestie. Spread the word. We're out here trying to build a cult. Chelsea says we're very good cult leaders because we give you guys something in return. Hopefully that's support and love and a community.
Chelsea: And not abuse.
Vivian: We're building a cult for good, you guys, marketing good.
Chelsea: So also make sure you leave a review because that helps with the algorithm and stuff like that, so that we can get in front of more people. Just go be the best S.O.B. you can be.