A Story About How to Get $55 in Sales for Every $1 Spent on Marketing

Intro: 0:01

You're in the marketing world and you're looking for inspiration, or you're a business leader who wants to understand what good marketing looks like. You're busy. You don't have time to sit around listening to a rambling 3 hour podcast. We get it. This is the Remarkable Marketing Podcast, where we celebrate the marketing rock stars that deliver truly remarkable marketing, and you'll hear short interviews with marketing execs who share stories about the best marketing they've ever done, how it delivered a huge impact and how they overcame all the challenges to make it happen. If you aspire to be remarkable, you'll walk away with ideas on how to do truly epic marketing. Getting right to the content of what you need for busy professionals, this is the Remarkable Marketing Podcast. Now your host, eric Eden.

Eric Eden: 0:56

All right, all right, all right. Welcome to the podcast. Our guest today is Nikki. She is a Facebook and SEO guru that helps businesses grow via Facebook and SEO and digital marketing strategies. Welcome to the show, Nikki.

Nicole Sciberras: 1:13

Thank you so much for having me Really excited to be here.

Eric Eden: 1:17

And we can tell by the accent that you are from Australia, correct?

Nicole Sciberras: 1:21

I sure am Good pickup. Have you had a few Aussies on the show?

Eric Eden: 1:26

I have had and I have gotten to spend some good time there. I was actually in New Zealand for New Years. That was quite fun.

Nicole Sciberras: 1:34

Yeah, you're well acquainted with Australia. That's great.

Eric Eden: 1:38

So you have a story for us today about some of your clients that you've worked with over the years and how you've been able to help them and do some really remarkable marketing with them. We'd love to hear about it.

Nicole Sciberras: 1:50

Yes, amazing. So, as Eric said, I am a Facebook and Instagram ads and SEO guru and essentially we help all different types of businesses service-based and Econ. But today I'm going to go into a particular example and it's a client that I've worked with for a really long time and we've kind of navigated different seasons with them, based on kind of internal and external factors that have really impacted, I guess, their marketing and their sales. So that company is called the Vintage Secret and they are a repurposed designer jewelry business. So essentially what that means is they take different buttons and pieces from designers like Chanel or Christian Dior and then they repurpose them into a new piece, which makes the piece more affordable for everyday people. So essentially it gives the opportunity for everyone to be able to have a designer piece of jewelry and the brand pretty much took off straight from the start. So it was quite a new concept in Australia. When it first started we were seeing a lot of it kind of popping up in Europe, given the brand like a lot of the European brands are over there. But it was pretty revolutionary in Australia. So it took off. At the start we were running Facebook ads that were going super well, but then the iOS 14.5 update came in and then we just noticed sales just started to drop dramatically because we didn't have any way to track who was coming to the website and retargeting was a big part of what we did for that particular brand. So what happened is we had to basically find a whole new way to market to their customers and be able to reach their ideal customers, because we lost access because most of their, I guess, following were Apple users. So essentially we went on the journey with them and we had to test and optimize so many different things, which is a huge part of marketing. So people think that you're just going to do your marketing and basically it's just going to take off, but it's not true. So over the past three or four years we've had that first kind of challenge pop up and then we had to navigate different things. So essentially we had to navigate the 14.5 update. Then, with the website not being updated dramatically all the time, we've had to navigate low conversion rates and how to update the website in order to start improving how many people that lend on the website that actually buy. That number had dropped by a percent, and a percent can make a huge difference to the bottom line. So it's really important people check their website conversion rates Again. That's how many people lend on your website and convert. And there's also we implemented email marketing and we've also implemented SEO. So email marketing has been really successful, as email marketing has a very high return on investment. But we also implemented search engine optimization for them, which is all the things like action steps that you take on your website and on other people's websites to get ranking in Google. And I actually used their brand recently for a case study when I was teaching a class and I was trying to find a word that was in their niche that they didn't rank first for in Australia, and I couldn't actually find one. So that was like a hugely successful part of the SEO work that we implemented for them. But then some of the other challenges that popped up over the time is that the owner only wanted to start selling authentic pieces, so we found that some of the pieces that we thought we were getting from the designers weren't actually authenticated. So when we went down that path, we couldn't find, or we weren't then able to sell, any of the super popular products that were selling. So then that obviously made the sales decrease dramatically. And then also some of the main brands that they were reselling that were the most popular decided that we weren't allowed to sell them anymore. Because of that, we not only were blocked from advertising, but we were also lost our best selling products and we lost our best selling people that we resell for. So the brands that we were reselling the best, we lost those ones. So, going from having really high profit, we then had to look at ways that we could turn the marketing around and start to see success with what we had. So we changed the way that we created the Facebook ads campaigns and we started using email marketing as a huge way to be able to retarget people, because we weren't able to do that with ads. And then we implemented a really strong search engine optimization strategy and those three collective things Plus, at the moment we're also doing another website upgrade to bring that conversion rate up to a strong place, because for every percent the sales almost double. So with those four things alone we've been able to rescue the business back to where it was, and last week we had a return on ad spend for a new campaign that we started and it was up to 55 already, which is huge. So just on average, a row as of four with meta ads is really strong, and so we're saying for every dollar that they spend they get $4 back. But at the moment, for every dollar they're spending they're getting $55 back. So it's hugely successful and I guess all the marketing that we've done has compounded over time and we've learned so much in that time and we also have a really strong understanding of who their ideal customer is. So that definitely helps play a big part in the messaging and the kind of advertising that we put out there.

Eric Eden: 7:14

So you really had to roll with the punches, because that iOS 14 update really impacted many businesses. I mean, I think I'd be retired at the beach right now. The targeting was so good before that update. I think we all sort of got really used to the golden times there. We didn't know it was the golden times in that moment, but it was, and then you had to adapt afterwards and then you got hit. Life isn't really fair. You got hit with the second big thing about the product issues and then being limited because of those product issues, because of the advertising. So it sounds like the key was using multiple different channels in addition to the advertising SEO and email in addition to the advertising, and continuing to do testing, because the first time you do something doesn't mean it's the optimum way to do it right. It seems like those were the keys to getting such a tremendous result right.

Nicole Sciberras: 8:07

Yeah, that's exactly right. So we had different marketing channels, but we chose marketing channels that we know are proven and work. So we knew that we could make ads work and they had worked for us in the past. We just had to adjust our strategy and then we knew search engine optimization was going to work, because a lot of people don't implement it, but nearly everybody starts a search on Google and it's basically a no brainer. So for those people that are implementing it, they generally see huge results from it. Yeah, you're right, those were the golden years. Now things are starting to pick up, now that we've got the conversion API that we can link through. But I think a big thing that I guess I want people to take away for those who don't have a marketing background is, as you said, that's the testing and the optimizing that really makes a huge difference. So don't go in whether you're marketing yourself or bringing in agency, and think that it's just going to have all the answers from day one. It's going to take time to build an understanding of what your audience is responding to and then being able to scale that.

Eric Eden: 9:03

That's right. That's amazing. So I believe you have a resource that if people want to know a little bit more about the details of how to really do that, I think you mentioned you have a really great resource people can tap into for that.

Nicole Sciberras: 9:18

Yeah, fantastic, thank you. So essentially, I have just created this traffic and sales planner and calculator and what it allows you to do is determine how much website traffic you need to hit your revenue goal this year and beyond, and then what it does is it'll break that down and help you create an action plan on how to get there so that you hit your revenue goal. So you can find that at the digital exchangeco forward, slash traffic and also pass it over to Eric to put in the show notes.

Eric Eden: 9:51

Great, Well, everyone should share this episode with their friends, because this is some really great knowledge getting over $50 back for every dollar you spend in marketing. That's something to strive for and rate, review and subscribe for us. That really helps us get great guests like Nikki on the show and keep bringing these ideas to you. Nikki, thanks for joining us today. Thanks so much for having me.

Intro: 10:19

You've been listening to the Remarkable Marketing Podcast. Our passion is to bring you the marketing rock stars who share stories about the best marketing they've done, how it delivered and how they handled all the challenges that go along with it. And we do it all in 10 minutes. We only ask two things. First, visit the RemarkableMarketingio website for more great insights. Second, this podcast has been brought to you by the Next Generation Social Networking App, workverse. You can download and use the Workverse app for free to build your professional brand, become a paid expert advisor and discover the best business events to attend. Download the Workverse app today. See you next time on the Remarkable Marketing Podcast.