Episode 15

Season 2

Why a Marketing Plan is Critical for Success

Welcome Dr. Jan Southern to Saturday Soundbites! Join Jan and Veronica as they talk shop and discuss the importance of a well-designed marketing plan and how it can make or break your business.

Jan shares her experiences in helping business owners identify their marketing needs and how she has helped them save time and resources as they implement their marketing plans.

Jan is the CEO of J. Delsur Marketing and a magazine publisher. She is passionate about using strategy and planning to guide business decisions.

[00:00:00] Veronica: Welcome to Saturday soundbites. I'm your host, Veronica sofa. And I am thrilled to be here with you again, talking about all things, visibility strategy. We know that advertising, marketing, public relations, branding, networking, all that stuff is going to help you grow your business. Grow. Brands to help you to stay on message.

[00:00:27] And when you're constantly in the conversation, you have the opportunity to learn and grow. And we are so excited to have a phenomenal guest on our show today. If you are listening on our podcast, make sure you hit subscribe, but we don't want you to miss any episodes of Saturday soundbites. And if you are watching on Facebook or on YouTube, make sure you drop some comments in the comments box so that my guests and I can go back and reconnect with.

[00:00:51] And if you happen to be catching us later, hashtag replace so that we know that we can go back and finish any conversations or any questions that you have. So we're going to go ahead and get started. I'm going to introduce my guest today. Thrilled to have her from Georgia. Dr. Jan Southern is joining us now let's go ahead and get you on.

[00:01:11] Welcome to Saturday soundbites. Thank you. 

[00:01:14] Jan: Thank you for having. 

[00:01:16] Veronica: So glad to have you on. I love when we have academic folks who can share some strategy and techniques and really kind of tie it all up for us, especially when we're trying to figure out how to do it and the practical business world. So thank you so much for joining.

[00:01:32] Jan: Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for having me. I have to say I'm not an academic. I certainly wouldn't want to take that title from anyone who does that day to day for a living so well, 

[00:01:44] Veronica: writing a dissertation in my book puts you up there with someone who has studied the art. 

[00:01:50] Jan: That's right. That's right. Good.

[00:01:52] Good. 

[00:01:52] Veronica: Well, Jan, tell us a little bit about yourself. You are the CEO of J Delson marketing group. You're also the publisher of two very successful magazines in your area. Tell us a little bit about how you got into the marketing space so that we can tune in and get some gems from you. Great. 

[00:02:08] Jan: Thank you.

[00:02:08] Well, I've been in marketing for more than 30 years. I started out as a graphic designer and then kind of quickly moved into marketing. I love the design aspects, but I was always questioning why I was designing things. You know, what did the customer, what does the customer want? Why am I, why is it, why are you asking for this when.

[00:02:29] I don't know what the customer wants, so it just became like a natural transition into marketing. And, and it's something that I absolutely love doing. So I'm grateful to be doing something that I'm really passionate about and what I own, what I really love. I spent 16 years. In higher education.

[00:02:45] So I was the associate VP and VP for marketing and communications at three universities. And that was a really great training ground. If you're familiar with the universities, you know, there's multiple audiences, there's multiple age groups, there's different dynamics. Politics, those kinds of things that make it just a really interesting area to, to do marketing.

[00:03:08] And so spent a lot of time doing that in 2019, I started J Dell star marketing group because I was really passionate about helping businesses. Figure it, figure it out. I've done, you know, I've worked with lots of different organizations and just helping them do marketing in a strategic way. And it's just has this, something that I was really I really enjoyed and was really passionate about.

[00:03:29] So I started my business then, and then a few months later, I had the opportunity to buy these two local magazines and really turned those around, made those online and in print and just have a, having a lot of fun doing. 

[00:03:42] Veronica: That's so exciting. And I love some of the the things that you shared about taking what you learned from your previous experiences and helping people now figure out what to do next.

[00:03:53] So let's talk about that. First of all, people get confused with what marketing is. Give us just a quick one-on-one about, about marketing and how it differs from maybe advertising. 

[00:04:04] Jan: Sure. Well, marketing is really the overarching to me, the overarching. Industry of marketing is promoting it's, it's setting your price.

[00:04:14] It's it's the communications, it's your outreach. It's all of those elements brought together to promote the product or the service that you, that you offer. So it encompasses all of that. So advertising is just kind of one part of, of a marketing of. 

[00:04:32] Veronica: Right. And, and talk, talk to us a little bit about why it's important to understand all that.

[00:04:38] You've done a great job in, in setting up your businesses and your publications. So clearly there was some strategy behind it. Talk to us a little bit about what that looks like for a business owner. Maybe someone who has a traditional brick and mortar business, how would they go about starting that conversation?

[00:04:56] Jan: Well, I see a, what what's interesting to me is I see a lot of businesses and organizations just throughout my career that they want them, they want to promote, they want to advertise their business and they, but they don't really know what they want to see. And it comes down to, they haven't taken the time to kind of step back and look at what are their goals, you know, who, who is really the ideal client for that business or their ideal customer, and then crafting messaging to those.

[00:05:26] Specific audiences is really the most important thing. And I don't think enough of enough business owners take the time to do that. And so I always tell people before you spend a dime on advertising, have a marketing plan because it will save you. Thousands of dollars, lots and lots of hours and frustration.

[00:05:45] And that if you, if you really start with a plan and we, we don't often step back and do that. So I found that that has been made a great improvement in some of the marketing that's being done by, by certain businesses that we work. 

[00:06:01] Veronica: And how does one start a marketing plan? I know that there's a lot of resources online.

[00:06:06] There are traditional agencies, but if you are just getting started and trying to figure out where to go, how would you recommend someone just get started? 

[00:06:17] Jan: I really, I, you know, we've all, we've probably, you've probably. Time and working in a company with developing a strategic plan, you know, and we spend all this time putting together this long multi page document of a strategic plan for the business.

[00:06:32] And then it sits in a drawer and we don't really do anything with it. So I feel like we, the marketing plan can be. As simple as you, as you want it to be. And I really, I call ours a micro marketing plan because it's, it can be a six month plan or it can be a year plan, but it's it's really just stepping back and saying, what do I want to achieve in a year from now?

[00:06:53] If I look back. You know, if a year from now, what does success look like? And you know, what's my dream client. What's my ideal customer, you know, and maybe look at your financials and say, these are the people that typically buy from us. Then get to know who they are. And then just put together some targeted messaging around for that, you know, to appeal to that person.

[00:07:18] And then you'll have an answer of where you should advertise, because sometimes we might spend time on a social media platform because we think it's the latest thing. And our, our customer might not even be on that platform. So just even stepping back a moment and saying, okay, who am I trying to reach with this message this week?

[00:07:36] And then. You know, taking action towards they're in the right channel and the right marketing channel. So it doesn't have to be, it's not complicated. You know, it's it's not, it's just takes some time to step back and, and evaluate it before you spend any money or time on, on everybody. 

[00:07:57] Veronica: Right. That makes sense.

[00:07:58] Time and money. The two things that we all need more of when we're trying to run a business. 

[00:08:03] Jan: That's right. 

[00:08:04] Veronica: So what are some of the mistakes that you see folks making as they're, as they're using. Designing their marketing plan or moving forward without a marketing plan. I want to, I want to help people find maybe in their space where they're struggling and see if there's any correlations or any connections they can make with mistakes.

[00:08:25] You see others doing. 

[00:08:28] Jan: Yes. So sometimes. Do marketing, because we see our competitors doing that, that marketing, we might choose to do a billboard or do some sort of advertising because it, we can see it. And it makes us feel like we're doing something. We're putting something out a lot of times. I see people doing things at the last minute, just because they need to get something out and that, you know, isn't always a good, so it's kind of check yourself.

[00:09:01] Why are you, why do you want to do that particular? Action. If it's a, you know, a print ad or a re a TV spot or a radio spot, and also we're bombarded by sales people selling us the latest and greatest, right. There's about 6,000 right now. Marketing technology companies out there. So, you know, we're always getting calls from Google, or we're getting calls from the TV station or anything like that.

[00:09:30] By having a plan, you don't have to be influenced by those calls. You can evaluate them, but you're going to evaluate them from an informed point of view. You're going to have some idea of what you're trying to achieve, and then you can make decisions. So, you know, don't be influenced by every new shiny object that comes about in order to promote your business.

[00:09:53] That would be my advice. 

[00:09:55] Veronica: And how, and how would you suggest someone analyze one of those tools? Because there are, there are plenty of tools out there. There are plenty of resources and what my work great in one space may not translate to another space. So how do you recommend folks analyze the best marketing tool as they're making some decisions?

[00:10:17] Jan: Yeah, I would look at. You can look at competitors, you can look at your industry and see where they are. Again, understanding your customer, where your customer is spending their time, and then how, how could you reach them? And if you're not sure if it's if it's something that you want to. Explore. You can always start small.

[00:10:37] A lot of the digital marketing that's done, you can start small and then scale. I would also maybe do tests. So if you're doing say a social media ad campaign, you can do an AB test, try two different photos, two different headlines, and see what change. One of those things in, in the two, in the two ads and see which one works better.

[00:10:58] And analytics is, is a wonderful. Tool we didn't have that, you know, 15, 20 years ago with when you run a, a billboard or a TV commercial, we certainly didn't have those analytics. We also don't have a lot of time to spend analyzing that. So it's good to have a professional that can help you with that.

[00:11:15] But taking a look at what's working, looking at what. Organic posts on social media got the most engagement and do more of that. You know, if something's working, do more of that. But also just try things out if as long as you've done the work ahead of time to understand who you're reaching, then try some of those technologies on a small scale and see what works.

[00:11:36] And then you can always expand. That's some 

[00:11:39] Veronica: great advice. I love that. And really when you're thinking about analytics, are there any free resources that. Use it all. Or do you think if you're really looking at your data, you need to invest in a platform that can support that? I 

[00:11:54] Jan: certainly would highly recommend a marketing automation platform.

[00:11:59] We use SharpSpring for our clients and it is. It's a one stop for everything related to your marketing. And you can see all of your analytics in there. You can, if you send out emails, you can look at the email reports to see exactly what people clicked on. You can set up drip campaigns, email drip campaigns in those kinds of platforms.

[00:12:18] Yeah. There's probably a few different marketing automation softwares you could use. Google analytics is great. Those tools are free in social media and Facebook and Instagram, you can go to insights on your business page and see who's, you know, the types of people that are clicking, where they're coming from.

[00:12:35] You can see which, which posts got the most engagement. What time of day? You're you're getting the most engagement, those kinds of things. So there are, there are a lot of free tools. The interest, the thing is though those tools are all separate, you know, you have to go to Google analytics to look at these.

[00:12:50] You have to go to Facebook to look at these. So it's good to find one that's you know, where you can look at everything all at once. 

[00:12:57] Veronica: Yeah, that's a great idea. So when we're talking about traditional marketing and we, you know, we've been talking a lot about digital, are there any mistakes or suggestions you have for folks to be thinking about traditional marketing efforts?

[00:13:11] You mentioned billboards, which is one, but what are you seeing as people are designing marketing plans and where they're putting their money in more traditional marketing efforts? 

[00:13:21] Jan: Well, it takes, they say between. I mean, there's different numbers, eight to 11 touchpoints before a person will react to your respond to you, you know, make a decision to purchase from you.

[00:13:33] So it's a really good idea to spread it around and have multiple things going on at the same time. And marketing has a long game. So it isn't, it isn't a trans, a quick transaction. Process, sometimes it is, but often it is a longer, longer process. So I would say I have a client that we just had this conversation this morning.

[00:13:55] All of a sudden their business is really growing and we've been doing, we've been working on their social media and on some Google ads and things. Over the last year and now it's really starting to build momentum. So it's a ma it's a, it's a combination of the things that they're, that they're doing. So.

[00:14:15] People think print is dead, you know, and I get so tired of hearing that because local magazines absolutely work. When I was with the university I had, I went, I had a hundred thousand dollar advertising budget up to $2 million advertising budget. And I always advertised in the local magazines because the new residents pick those up.

[00:14:37] The people want to see what's going on in the community. So those are Effective ways to advertise. So traditional is, is here to stay. You just have to be selective, know where your audience is and reach them there. You know, if TV, if TV works for your audience, if they have the demographics that you're, you're, you're looking for, go with TV.

[00:14:59] There's a lot of value in traditional advertising. As well as, as. 

[00:15:04] Veronica: Yeah, I love that. And I love that you said that print is not dead because it absolutely is not. 

[00:15:10] Jan: I think there's a resurgence. I was heard some data on that too. Or, you know, the younger, younger people are coming back to that as well.

[00:15:17] Cause we get tired. Don't you get tired of looking at your phone? I mean, You know, it's great, but sometimes it's just, you need to take a breath, a breath, a break from looking at your, looking at your phones. Right, right. 

[00:15:30] Veronica: And you bring them some really good points. We, we consume so much information from so many different places and some of us are visual learners and some of us are auditory learners.

[00:15:40] And so when there's an opportunity for you to really work on your marketing plan, like you said, and you've identified your target audience or your ideal client, then you can. Go to where they're going to consume their information. And I love the example you gave about the university because some companies have super large budgets and some companies have smaller budgets, but that doesn't mean you don't your cost there's cost opportunities.

[00:16:05] In any of those mediums, you 

[00:16:06] Jan: just have to do your research. That's right. That's right. Really understand who you're reaching and then tailor your messaging to the right audience and to the right place. 

[00:16:16] Veronica: That's so true. Do you work with any folks outside of your geographical region or do you generally support businesses inside your geographical area?

[00:16:26] Jan: No. Wait, I have clients across the country. Yeah. It's. Yeah, I have a variety of, of companies usually midsize and some small to mid-size companies that I work with. 

[00:16:40] Veronica: And do you feel like since the pandemic people have changed the way they want to do their marketing business? And the reason why I ask is because traditionally your, your.

[00:16:50] You would want to work with a marketer who has a good pulse on what's happening in that community. But I assert since the pandemic, our reach has changed drastically and you might be more open to working with someone in a different region and because those resources are now available online. 

[00:17:09] Jan: Right.

[00:17:09] An outside perspective is also really valuable, you know, someone to come in, who's not in the community that I think can be an advantage as well. So I think it goes both ways. I'm also finding after, since we've come out of the pandemic, I find people are looking for additional ways to reach. Or additional ways to advertise and market because social media has gotten so saturated during, during the pandemic and everybody's online buying everything, which is great, but it is very saturated.

[00:17:43] It's also more costly to, to promote on social media. And so I've seen quite a few companies that are really reaching out to come up with other ways, additional ways to promote their business. Got it. 

[00:17:56] Veronica: Yeah, no, I think that's a great observation. So what tips do you have for folks who have maybe started a marketing plan, and aren't quite sure if it's working, I know you talked a lot about analytics and I know just from having been in the business of evaluating that data and evaluating how your messaging is working or not working is really important, but what advice would you have for someone who's already launched a marketing plan?

[00:18:22] And isn't quite sure if it's working or not. 

[00:18:25] Jan: Hm. Well, I would have hoped that they have some baseline numbers to work with. So starting out, you know, if you're, if you've, if you know the hits to your website, you know, the number of people that come into your store on an average day, those kinds of things start with those numbers and just, and just evaluate those.

[00:18:42] And if something that I would give, I would definitely give something three months, at least. To really get some traction before I would shift. And that's sometimes hard to do because we want to see immediate results. But I would definitely try to give it a few months before you try to shift. 

[00:19:00] Veronica: Yeah, that's some really great advice.

[00:19:02] Well, Jane, how can people connect with you? How, how is a way that someone could reach out, maybe ask you some questions and learn a little bit more about your services. It sounds like you're working with people all over the country and can support small and mid-sized businesses. And so the tips you've given have been really fantastic and I think really on point.

[00:19:21] So I want to make sure people know how to ask. Your skills and 

[00:19:24] Jan: talents. Oh, well, thank you. They can reach me at J Del Sur marketing.com. My email is jan@jdelsurmarketing.com. 

[00:19:34] Veronica: Fantastic. And I'll make sure that those are in the show notes as well. I'm Dr. Southern, you have been fantastic, and I loved all the information you've given you.

[00:19:43] You're speaking my love language. So thank you for 

[00:19:47] Jan: being on the show. 

[00:19:50] Veronica: Fantastic. All right. Well that wraps up this episode of Saturday soundbites. As always the guests I ring have really rich content. That's going to help you and continue the conversation you're having about your business, how to grow it, how to network more, how to use your marketing plan.

[00:20:11] To really make a difference. So make sure you connect with Dr. Jan Southern her information will definitely be in the show notes. And as always, I'm sending you positive energy and light. Make sure you connect with us online and download our latest podcast. And don't forget to hit subscribe. All right.

[00:20:30] Have a great one.