How to Pay for Marketing With Co-Op Advertising

Amanda Ballard: 0:00

And it’s funny because I’ve talked with other retailers that have dabbled in this co-op advertising space that we’re going to be talking about today and they’re like, yeah, it just didn’t really work for me. I’m like, well, why? And they’re like, well, we just didn’t have someone to really run it. I was like, well, there’s your answer.

Tina Smith: 0:19

Welcome to the Natural Products Marketer podcast.

Amanda Ballard: 0:22

I’m Tina and I’m Amanda, and we’re here to make marketing easier for natural products businesses, so you can reach more people and change more lives.

Tina Smith: 0:33

Hi there, thanks for joining us on the podcast today, and today we’re going to be talking with Amanda Ballard about making money with your marketing to fund your marketing. So one of the biggest things that we hear from natural products retailers is that they don’t have enough money to invest in their marketing, and Amanda has had some very clever ways of having marketing fund her marketing campaign. So that’s what we’re going to be talking about today, and so, if you have ever struggled with funding your marketing, we’ve got a new way for you to look at this and figure out how to fund your marketing with marketing itself.

Amanda Ballard: 1:15

I want to preface this conversation first that if you want to do this, if you want to make your marketing basically fund itself, you have to be willing to invest a person’s time. So, having that mindset going into this, where this isn’t just a oh, I can just press a few buttons, you know, make a few phone calls and make this happen and have it be sustainable and, you know, really bring in some significant revenue for you, you have to dedicate the person that’s going to kind of run this program. So just, you’ve been warned this this does require a person behind all of this to make it happen. Whether or not that’s your, you know your marketing person on staff or you know one of your buyers or whoever it is that that person behind all of this is the key to success.

Tina Smith: 2:06

One thing that we talk about a lot, though, amanda, is that marketing or running a business in general, it either takes money or it takes time, and sometimes you can do some combination of both, but you’re never going to do it without either.

Amanda Ballard: 2:20

Exactly. And it’s funny because I’ve talked with other retailers that have dabbled in this co-op advertising space that we’re going to be talking about today and they’re like, yeah, it just didn’t really work for me. I’m like, well, why? And they’re like, well, we just didn’t have someone to really run it. I was like, well, there’s your answer, because it can work really really well if you invest the time to make it happen. So, kind of just to jump right in, co-op advertising is basically it’s a co-op, so it’s you as the business owner or, you know, marketing team working with another company to get the word out about whatever product promotion that you want to, that you want to put together. So when I started doing this I guess it was seven years ago now it looked a lot different than it does now, just because of the ever changing you know means of which people advertise. So when I first started doing this, we actually did a lot in print media and, depending on you know, each store is different. You might do really really well with print media campaigns and that’s great. But as time went on, I was like, yeah, I think that there’s more you know cost effective ways where we can do that and have something a little bit more measurable. So it really just depends and that’s the fun thing is, you can get creative and come up with new and effective ways to get the word out, but basically it’s you as the store and a vendor pooling your resources to just make a splash and get your name out, make some noise. So it can really take on any shape that you want and I think the big thing is to utilize what you have. So if you are a retail space, you have end caps. I don’t know how many, but you probably have at least one or three is probably minimum. You know, depending on the size of your store, you might have six or eight, you know somewhere in that range. End caps are a fantastic way to just have retail square footage to draw attention to people as soon as they walk in the door. It can be digital signage when you’re in a store, digital signage whether that’s in the store or maybe you have a sign outside of your door. Maybe it’s posters, maybe it’s in store. You know, hey, we’re going to print these little postcards and hand them out to people as they check out or as they walk in the door. There’s so many different things, but basically, you know it all comes back to you coming up with an idea and pitching that to your vendor and saying, hey, do you want to partner with us on this? Here’s kind of what the investment looks like and here’s the ROI that we’re shooting for and have a kind of just this unified approach to. You know, at the end of the day, they want to increase their sales in your store and you want to increase your sales, so it’s a win-win for both parties. It just needs to. You know, you just need to follow through on it.

Tina Smith: 5:24

OK. So my biggest question is if you have a particular story or a time that you have done this successfully and sort of take us through that from start to finish, how did you ask what was the investment that you were asking for, and then what are the results look like on the end?

Amanda Ballard: 5:43

Yeah. So it’s funny when I started doing this and I told this in our introduction episode, I had literally like never taken a supplement in my life with the exception of like my childhood chewable, you know, multivitamin. So I had no idea what I was doing. And so I would like call these brands and be like, hey, like do you want to set up an end cap? I was like, what’s an end cap? Like I don’t know what an end cap is. I’m like just trying to figure out what all of this stuff is, and I didn’t know what a line drive was. And so I like I just felt like a fish out of water. And then I would call these, these brokers that represented multiple brands, and then they would just start talking to me about all these different brands. I’m like, wait, it’s not just one company. Like what am I missing? So anyway, high insight. I learned a lot through all of that, so probably should know more about what you’re trying to sell before you actually start selling. And how it became successful is just through trial and error. I would. I would start off, you know, going to a company that I later learned. You know, hey, we do a lot of business with them. How can we increase that? Trying to talk to our buyers and figure out, you know, hey, they typically do these sales, maybe once a quarter how can we kind of make those bigger? So that was kind of where I started from is you know, we have, you know, a brand. Let’s just use, you know, garden of Life as an example. So Garden of Life, they do, you know, a quarterly promo and you know we get an extra, you know, let’s say, 20% off of our, of our normal everyday price. Let’s figure out a way to make that make a bigger splash. So I would go to them and say, hey, like we have this promo coming up in April and what I want to do is make sure that you guys have a ton of square footage in the store, so we’re going to put you on an end cap. Another thing that I would like to have you consider is doing some digital signage. So that way you have a few other spots in the store where you know you’re just going to have more opportunity for people to see the sale, and then we’re going to have some different, you know, maybe some handwritten signs and do different tags that are more like different than our normal tags. So just presenting all of this together and at first our prices were really low because I didn’t really know what the value was at the time and then, through kind of just seeing, going back to you know, after the month was over, seeing any sort of lift that happened with our units sold or just our net sales, and being like, oh wow, like by doing X, y and Z, we increase their sales three times compared to the month before. So then I had more data to use. So then the next time that I went to them I was like, hey, this worked really well, let’s do that again. And then what if we tacked on a blog post? Because we have really good traffic on our website, I would love to do a blog on college and college is really trendy right now. What are some things that you can help us put together? And we were fortunate to have a really good web presence anyway and we had a lot of articles and that just that really helps. But if that’s not the case, it doesn’t mean you can’t start, because a lot of these companies again, they have tons of resources where it’s like, if you want to maybe start a blog, or maybe you just started one. It’s like we want to get some of this content provided to us by these brands. They have it available and they’re willing to share it. So you can do different things like that. But I found very, very quickly that by having a plan and putting together something that was reasonably priced, we were seeing two to three times increases comparing the month prior and then also the year prior. So I would always look at both and then, as time went on, it was like, ok, well, let’s see how sales are picking up throughout the rest of the month after and the month after that. And then it’s like, ok, we see kind of a trend that maybe things start to dip a little bit when we haven’t done anything for a while. We have to do something quarterly to keep things fresh, try different things. So so much of it is just going to be trial and error and learning, just analyzing your data, because data tells you so much, and I think that was where we found this is actually a lot more impactful than we give it credit for. Then we were able to start raising our prices because it was like this actually works really, really well. You’re going to get a great return when you partner with us.

Tina Smith: 10:26

Yeah, that’s awesome and I have a couple of questions from maybe the point of view of some uninitiated who might be listening. But tell me a little bit about. You said you had no idea what a line drive was. Tell us what that is.

Amanda Ballard: 10:42

So a line drive is basically an additional discount on top of what you get every single day. So typically you get those, depending on the brand, it’s once a quarter, maybe once every four months or so. It really just depends on the company. Sometimes it’s more than that, but yeah, typically it’s just an additional percentage off of the entire line and then, depending on the brand as well, it might be hey, it’s an extra 5% off your everyday, or an extra 10% or 15% off, and then these products, maybe they’re 50% off. This is a select number. So that’s what a line drive is.

Tina Smith: 11:21

OK, and so then you were getting that Plus. They were paying to help do the promotions.

Amanda Ballard: 11:27

Yes, and that was the other thing, that it’s kind of this give and take relationship Because they said we’re going to give you this line drive. That’s just part of our arrangement. Even if you did nothing, we are going to get that. That’s just how we operate our business. But if you want us to pay for a spot in your store, pay for an end cap, we really want to make sure that you’re buying a certain amount of product. So it might have been more than what we would have typically purchased. But again it’s like why wouldn’t I? I’m getting those at a cheaper price than I normally would, and then our end cap is going to look more full. It’s going to look like, oh wow, they have a lot of product, so it’s a. You know, the company that’s investing in us benefits and then we are benefiting as well. It seems a little bit riskier if you’re not used to moving a ton of product where it’s like you know, maybe you only buy 20 units a month and then it’s like, oh well, it’s really made by end cap. Look good, I’m going to need to buy 100. You know it’s a bigger increase. But I think that for the most part, those bigger buy-ins end up just creating more excitement.

Tina Smith: 12:38

Yeah, and if you think about it, if it really does pay off with the two to three times the revenue there, like you’re talking about, then it pays for itself, right?

Amanda Ballard: 12:47

Exactly.

Tina Smith: 12:48

So then you were talking about digital signage? Tell me more.

Amanda Ballard: 12:53

There’s so many different things that you could do. You know, a lot of point of sales will have a customer facing display. You could do something like that in your store. Another thing that would work really well would possibly be a banner on your website, and that could be something you know. Maybe you put that on your home page at the very top. If you have a blog, you could do a static banner on the side. So there’s a bunch of different things you could do there. And then, if you have an e-commerce platform a lot of e-commerce platforms have an area where you could do web banners there as well, and maybe they have maybe they’re on a slider or something like that you can sell that space. It’s a valuable real estate for people, you know, depending on, you know, the traffic to your site and whatnot. Yeah, there’s so many things and it really just depends on the layout of your store. But now there’s different displays where different pieces of hardware that you can just plug into a TV In the, you know, in the back room, you can be just uploading different images and have those on display. You know, maybe it’s a, maybe you have a smoothie bar in your store and you know you’re doing a deal on, you know a collagen smoothie with ancient nutrition. You could do a little ad for them specifically. You’re promoting you know this brand of collagen in your collagen smoothie this month and do something digital there. So there’s so many different places where you could either have those displays maybe you already have them or you could consider adding them into your store.

Tina Smith: 14:28

And then you had mentioned, like doing a blog post on the website and you’re actually talking about getting content from the vendor, like you don’t have to write this yourself Exactly.

Amanda Ballard: 14:41

And if you want to write it, great, if you have the time and resources to do that absolutely, and that’s again. It really just depends on kind of the way you want to approach things. If you want to write it in your voice, you know, obviously take the time to write it. But if you don’t necessarily care to have guest contributors on your blog, that’s fine too. It saves you a bunch of time. So it really just depends on how you want to control the content on your site. I would say, regardless, you know, make sure that if you’re getting a piece of content from a third party, even if it is one of your trusted vendors, just make sure that you approve of it before you go and post it, because you know you don’t want to have them be bashing other companies or, you know, saying you know we have the best you know collagen on the market. It’s like, well, it’s debatable. So just make sure that you really approve of the messaging before you publish it. But yeah, it’s a great way to just educate your customers and then also provide, you know, a softer sell on the product.

Tina Smith: 15:50

Yeah, and much less work for you if the vendor is doing the heavy lifting on it. And then you might add a little commentary to it because to align with your values and what people love about your store. But it’s a great way to get content and other marketing materials without doing the work for it.

Amanda Ballard: 16:09

Exactly. And one thing and this was something that, again, things kind of evolved with time. When I first started doing this, you know, social media was definitely a thing, but I feel like the expectations were a lot lower for like what was considered to be good content, and so things have definitely changed in the last seven years. As far as you know what people almost expect out of like a video, for example, where initially I was accepting video footage from my vendors and being like, oh yeah, like they did the video work for me. I don’t want to do it, whereas in like in hindsight, looking back, I’m like that was a terrible video. Why did I ever do that like? Even though they paid for it? I was like, oh, like, you’re still putting your name on it by posting it. In hindsight, I would probably do that differently. But again, to do some of that content creation yourself, especially with video, you don’t necessarily have to have a fancy pants camera and all the things. You can produce great content on a cell phone nowadays, so have fun, make it your own, and then you know that’s another thing that you can charge for. As you know, as long as that return is there, make sure the price is fair and you know, if you don’t have good reach on your page like, it’s probably not worth a ton. So you know, just be be very honest with yourself about what this is actually worth and then you know, also determine is it worth my time to do this. Because, depending on how long it takes you to produce a piece of content, depending on how much someone would actually be paying you to do that and the return you might get, you just kind of have to look at things like is this actually a good option for us to to offer to our brands to participate with us?

Tina Smith: 18:04

So some of the things that are coming to mind for me it are just how would you maybe do this on social media and what might people be willing to pay for? And I’m thinking automatically, like if you issued a 30 day challenge for some supplement, do this for 30 days. I’m doing it for 30 days. I’m going to update once a week or however often. Here’s how I’m feeling, here’s what it looks like before and after results and have people follow along with you and give their results and start having conversation with them, with you about that on social media, always talking about the brand, always talking about that supplement, and I bet brands would be excited that you were doing something like that.

Amanda Ballard: 18:49

Absolutely yeah, and that’s the cool thing with this whole entire conversation is it can take on so many different forms and it goes back to do you have a plan and how are you going to execute that plan? Because if you go to one of your vendors and you’re like I want to do this 30 day challenge thing, I think it’s going to go over really well in my store. They’ll probably try it and they’ll be like sure, we’ll give you 250 bucks to do this video and you know we’ll send you free samples and you know make sure that your customers have enough product to actually do the challenge. So they’re definitely willing to take risks on you if you are willing to put yourself out there and then follow through and show them their results afterwards, like pull your sales reports after the month is over and actually measure the results. And you know data can basically say anything that you wanted to say. You know, maybe someone followed along on the 30 day challenge they didn’t participate, but they saw it the entire time and then maybe they decided the month after that they would participate in or maybe that they would buy that product, so that one’s a little bit harder to measure. But just because it didn’t equate to sales didn’t mean that you didn’t make an impression and it didn’t turn into a sale later.

Tina Smith: 20:08

Yeah, and the other thing I’m thinking is just from a store’s perspective. You’re going to get more traffic from that. You’re going to get people asking about that product and it’s a way to get engagement in your community. That might not lead to more sales of that particular product, but more sales overall, because they start to see you as the authority who does that thing. Right. So, matching that up with something you’re excited about would be really important, I think.

Amanda Ballard: 20:34

And something I’m sure a lot of natural product retailers are aware of this. But you know, the Google algorithm is and the Facebook algorithm is not necessarily a friend to our industry. So finding more and more creative ways to get your messaging out there without necessarily talking about specific products and their benefits and all of that, it’s a very annoying thing for marketers to try to figure out how to do this. Well, because it is a challenge to figure out what can I say, what can’t I say, not just from a legal standpoint, but just what’s the algorithm going to? Let me kind of communicate and are they going to actually distribute it to your people? And that’s where I think social media is fantastic. But then also being able to diversify and say, hey, let’s do this 30 day challenge via email, because we have a great email list and I think we could maybe get some engagement there. Or, you know, maybe we promote this quiz and it’s all about, you know, finding your perfect collagen or something like that. Do different things to maybe get around some of those, those annoying hoops you have to jump through to use social media.

Tina Smith: 21:55

So, coming back to this again, so I might be beating a dead horse, but user generated content would never. It’s attached to a person’s profile versus a company’s profile. It gets more exposure. The algorithm likes that more, even if they are talking about a specific product. So if you do something like a 30 day challenge and users get involved, their content is going to beat your content all day long. So that’s another reason that you can use that creative way. But you’re right, there’s a million other ways to do this. Email is fabulous. I don’t think people use it enough, and a lot of these natural products retailers have big lists because they’ve started collecting everyone that’s making a purchase, which kind of brings me to do you think that most natural products retailers are collecting email addresses from all of their purchasers.

Amanda Ballard: 22:48

I don’t have a good answer to that. Unfortunately, I think a lot of them do, but they don’t necessarily do anything with it, right, yeah, so I think that’s the bigger problem is not is under utilizing the customer data that they have, because it’s so powerful, and I’d love to do just a whole nother episode on just the power of customer data and how that can inform your marketing. But I think in the conversation of co-op advertising, being able to communicate on as many different channels as possible and offer, if you’re trying to sell that space, figuring out my email list I have 10,000 people on my email list and my open rate is 30%. That’s a lot higher than of a percentage of reach that you might have on your social media. So it’s like lean into email marketing and do things differently. That way. It might not be as flashy and maybe not quite as fun, but figure out how to make it more fun. Do more creatively designed emails. Embed a YouTube video in your email. Do different things like that to keep things fun and fresh.

Tina Smith: 24:04

Yeah, and I think that’s really a great point is that if you do have a large email list, it is a way to leverage that. This is more valuable than maybe you have less website traffic but you have a bigger email list. So lean into the places where you have a lot more credibility from the perspective of the vendor and talk to them about okay. Yeah, maybe we only have one or 200 people coming to our website every month, but look at this email list and we’re going to do two or three promotions that way and that becomes more valuable to a possible vendor.

Amanda Ballard: 24:36

Yeah, exactly, but over time, as you take the time to invest in developing a program like this, just be patient with it It’ll grow. I think the first year that I started doing this, I think I maybe got seven grand, which at the time it was like, hey, that’s seven grand that we didn’t have before, and now it’s upwards of 60 grand. It can really become very lucrative and be able to pay. If you have 60 grand coming in that is not related to your product sales, you can allocate all of that money to your marketing. So it’s like that’s a person’s salary. So now it’s like, okay, I can afford to hire a full-time marketing team. Maybe I was only having a part-time person. Well, now that person just gets promoted to full-time and maybe I can hire another part-timer or another full-timer and then be able to bring more stuff in-house. Because that’s the thing is, a lot of these services say hey, we can do your social media for you. They’re outrageously expensive and you don’t necessarily have as much control, because it’s some random company in town that doesn’t really know your business and they’re just trying to make a quick buck. But if you’re able to bring that person in-house where they can really understand the heartbeat of your store, then that’s going to be way more effective than some third party that doesn’t really care about your business.

Tina Smith: 26:14

Yeah. So that just brings me back to you’re talking about. This takes time. You need to allocate a person’s time. So when you’re thinking in terms of when you are starting out maybe $7,000, what’s coming in about? How much time did you have to dedicate in order to generate that kind of revenue?

Amanda Ballard: 26:34

I did everything from the sales to the design, to the accounting, so and to the planning and coordinating with our buyers and with the in-store staff. It started off probably 10 hours a week when I first got started. And again, it’s like, depending on your store setup, you might already have someone who’s who kind of has your promo calendar under control, where maybe it’s just something that you’re just tacking onto that, where it’s maybe you can find ways to make that a little bit more efficient. But I would say a lot of stores just don’t have that luxury. So it might just be that you start off someone 10 hours a week, someone you already have on staff that’s organized, that understands your store, understands how to come up with creative promotions and have it be a tag team thing. I mean, I was working with our buyer, with our management and then obviously with staff who are setting up end caps or things like that. So it was definitely a team effort. But as far as the sales go, the sales don’t take a ton of time. It’s just really just making sure that all of your ducks are in a row. And if you’re doing digital signage, who’s doing the design? Are you doing the design? Are you outsourcing it. There’s so many ways to do that. Easier than ever before. I mean, canva is incredible. When I first started, canva was not the Canva that it is now, and so I basically had to learn, just as I went, how to make this work. And now there’s millions of templates that are just absolutely beautiful and you can just fine tune it just a little bit. So I mean, it’s easier than ever, in my opinion. And the money is there. These vendors have money allocated for your store, based on sales. You know your budget might not be incredible to start, but you will see, if you are willing to put in the work, that that budget is just going to keep increasing year after year, because if you do this right, you’re going to see your sales increase for those brands and then they’re going to be like oh yeah, that really worked, here’s more money, let’s keep this rolling. So it’s a win-win for everybody.

Tina Smith: 28:55

That sounds amazing, and so if it’s 10 hours a week, then how long did that start to take before you saw a return on that investment? I mean almost immediately.

Amanda Ballard: 29:08

I mean we were making sales right away. We didn’t necessarily sell out every end cap or all of that, but at the time I want to say I was a very cheap employee back then, so it was well worth the investment. But again, it’s like they didn’t know what this would look like. So it was them taking a risk and figuring out what to do, figuring out if this was something that they wanted to invest in, and then very quickly, that turned into yeah, let’s do more. Do you need more hours to make this even more profitable? And it never was my full-time job. I don’t think this needs to be a full-time job for someone, unless you’re in a company that has multiple locations and you’re looking at dealing with closer to six figures worth of ad sales, like that would probably take a full-time person. But again, if your company is that big, you would have your accountants doing different things, and so it’s really more of a sales job than anything and just coordinating all of the efforts. But yeah, the return will come very quickly in my opinion if you plan and are diligent and are creative.

Tina Smith: 30:28

Yeah, so it sounds like, too, that you need someone in this position that would be a good communicator, absolutely, and someone who can work well with vendors.

Amanda Ballard: 30:38

And that’s the thing is, if your store is doing good business, it got to the point where, whenever I would always put out my next year’s promotional calendar, I would launch it in October for the following year. And it got to the point where I was selling out before January. Oh, wow, and it was. Every end cap was completely sold. And then it was like well, all the in-store stuff is taken, but maybe you really want to do something else in store. How can we make that happen? So then you’re coming up with even more ways Like these companies are literally going to just be throwing money at you if you do a good job where they’re like well, okay, I missed out, on the end cap, can we set up a display over here? Like, maybe we’ll buy the shelf for you or we’ll buy you a drink machine because we want to sample our drinks, and there’s so many things that when you build a successful program, they will come to you. And at that point the sales part, the part that used to take the longest it’s like oh, that’s done. So now I just get to come up with more ways to be more creative and come up with new products to offer to my vendors. Hey, we’re going to launch this podcast and you can do ads on the podcast or whatever it is, and then it’s just going to go up from there.

Tina Smith: 32:04

Yes, it sounds like pretty quick return on investment, and at some point it turns into prepaid almost, yeah, almost. Feeling enough, your end caps before the beginning of the year, and then you’re going to generate other things, and so then at that point there’s no sort of excuse about not marketing your store or supplements at all, because it’s basically being paid for Exactly.

Amanda Ballard: 32:30

Yeah. So then it’s like, hey, we want to dabble in doing some different Google ad campaigns. It’s like, well, now you have the money, you can set a $15 a day budget on Google ads and then not break the bank. You can do all of these different things, you know. Oh well, we want to try a loyalty program and do these different coupons. You don’t have to worry about the coupons hurting your bottom line, because you’ve already generated $50,000 in ad revenue where now that’s play money.

Tina Smith: 33:03

Right, so you can do a lot of tests and see what will really grow the rest of your revenue. So when we’re talking about making this successful mutually for the vendors because I think that’s what we have to offer them if they’re going to be willing to invest in this again and I know we’ve probably talked about this before but kind of a quick formula for making a success on both ends is you have a plan or you can ask for ideas from the vendor themselves. You sell the opportunity to them and then you prove that you’ve done it. So in some way you’re showing them the email campaigns, the digital signage. Take a picture with your phone and send it over. So you’re having sort of this confirmation we are using your money like we said that we would use it, and then in the end you follow up with results. And the one kind of scary piece about that is what if it didn’t work like we thought it was going to work?

Amanda Ballard: 33:58

Right, and that happens. It doesn’t happen a lot, but it does happen. And there’s so many different factors that you could look at. And again, that’s where, knowing your numbers and maybe knowing why we did this promotion with this one company and for whatever reason, maybe there were some out of stocks, it could have been something like that and then you are able to kind of just look back and be like what happened and it’s like, oh, you know, their number one selling product was out of stock. How did that happen? Maybe you know next time, if we catch that before let’s try to move your promotion, so that way, you know, we have a better picture of the success of this. Or, you know, maybe maybe there was bad weather, there could have been bad weather and it was just super rainy and so store traffic wasn’t as good. It’s like, well, you can’t help that. But other times, you know, you think everything could have gone right and it just didn’t. But that’s part of marketing is there is a risk of it not going perfect, and I feel like it very seldom does. You just use it as a test and then go back to that vendor and be like you know, you know, maybe you invested, you know, $350 this month in this ad campaign and it didn’t perform the way that we thought it would. You know, maybe maybe you only saw like a 1% lift on sales. Like it’s not not our norm. Maybe next month or next time we do this. Here’s another idea of what we could do differently. You know, maybe we need to. You know, last time we didn’t do a sale, maybe we didn’t pass along any discounts. Can we coordinate a sale next time? Create some buzz, you know, maybe maybe tap on one more thing, because maybe your brand and it doesn’t sound as good but like maybe your brand isn’t as exciting as some of the other brands. We had some other really good sales that month but they gave us discounts and you didn’t. So maybe next time we do a sale and try to drum up more excitement. So I mean, there’s so many things where you just need to be willing to say, like you know, it didn’t go according to plan and they need to be okay with that and I think most companies are willing to be to try again. Just because you had one campaign not go, you know, do a 3x return doesn’t mean that the next one won’t.

Tina Smith: 36:17

Yeah, so I think there’s a lot of learning there. I mean I’d never for anyone who might want to try this, that it’s looking at the data and then trying to interpret it. So, even if things didn’t go well, you want to be transparent, that this is what happened, these were the results. We did everything we promised and we still didn’t get them and then trying to interpret the data and you can ask for help with that from your mentor to what do you think might have gone wrong with this? But the other piece of it, like you were talking about, is knowing your other data. So I heard you talking about comparisons like it worked really well over here and it didn’t have anything to do with weather. They gave us some sales. So it’s really looking at the broad book of business instead of just one campaign at a time and you, being someone who can know what might have happened to cause things to go up, down or sideways, absolutely Making the explanation for the vendor and then trying again, doing something new. And, like you’re saying, most vendors are willing to work with you as long as you’re having this ongoing dialogue, right.

Amanda Ballard: 37:19

And at the end of the day, you know it could have been a riskier thing. Maybe you tried something you’ve never tried before and it just didn’t go great. It’s like, well, at least you tried, you tried something different. And most vendors are going to be like, hey, like it’s okay, like some things are a home run, some aren’t, and maybe that wasn’t even your fault, maybe it was like, maybe the product just wasn’t great, you know. And so I think so much of it is just being okay with things not being a home run every time, but just keep trying and be willing to shake things up and not be okay with the status quo all the time.

Tina Smith: 38:00

Yeah, and I think the other thing, just as you were talking about some of the things that you were able to do once you sold out of all this in caps, then you’re like, hey, maybe we could do a podcast. If you’re thinking as a business owner or marketing manager in a natural products retail store and you have some really great ideas for marketing things you would like to do at some time in the future, starting this slowly and then building up to it over a year or two might allow you to do that thing that you’ve always been wanting to do with marketing. Maybe it’s a podcast, maybe it’s building a new website, I don’t know. Dream as big as you’d like in the marketing lane, but you can fund this after some consistency of using tactics like this, partnering with vendors, and then you can fund your big marketing dreams Exactly. Yeah, I was just going to ask am I, am I overreaching there? Do you believe that’s a possibility?

Amanda Ballard: 38:55

No, that’s totally realistic because I mean, that’s the thing is like I said. You know, starting off at $7,000 after a year, like I mean, I paid for my time, which was good, but then it’s like, as I kept growing, it’s like, okay, now I paid for my time and then now we also have an extra 10 grand on top of that, Like okay, like we basically we’re getting close to paying for a website completely. Our website needs work, you know. And then it’s like I don’t have to come up with that money anymore. I think, kind of going back to our introduction, you know we have so many people that are like we don’t have the money to spend on marketing. It’s like now you don’t have an excuse and now you have some. And then also you should also be setting aside money out of your out of your revenue for marketing. So this shouldn’t be your only source of marketing dollars. So I will say that, but kind of like what you said, use this to fund your dream. This can be your dream money, whereas your other you know percentage that you allocate for your marketing. That’s just your. You know your daily operations.

Tina Smith: 40:03

Yeah, and we’re you know. We suggest somewhere between 6 and 20% of your revenue should automatically be set aside for marketing if you want to grow. So between 6 and 10, you’re probably not going to grow that much, it’s going to hold you steady. Anything above that is you’re more likely to grow by investing in marketing in that way. So think about that. If you’re not already investing some of that revenue into marketing, think about ways that you can dial down expenses over here or boost revenue over here so that you can start to cover some marketing dollars, because what we want for you is that you can serve more people, and the only way to do that is continue growing. So these are ways we’re trying to give you, some easy ways to sort of fund the possibility of growth and, at the same time, as a good steward of your business as it is, we suggest that you spend somewhere between 6% and 20% of your revenue and marketing To continue that growth so that you can serve more people.

Amanda Ballard: 41:06

So so, tina, for the people that don’t know. That’s six to 20%. Would that include payroll for a marketing?

Tina Smith: 41:14

team. Yeah, that’s a great question that I often get and the answer is yes, but you want to make sure that the blend of what you’re spending an actual campaigns versus the effort to produce a marketing thing has the right weight to it. So 20% to 80%. You know, if you’re gonna generate growth and revenue, you have to deploy the marketing For it to work for you and in order to deploy it, you’ve got to spend money and ads or in an email system or acquiring emails from people to put onto that list. So 20% on the production and then 80% on the actual deployment of the item would be a good ratio to start with.

Amanda Ballard: 42:01

That’s very helpful.

Tina Smith: 42:02

So, okay, like we do with all of our guests, and since this is sort of your first concentrated theme Podcast, let’s do some rapid-fire questions to close this out. I think this has been really helpful for everyone in Starting to build some revenue so that you can fund some of your marketing dreams. And now let’s just talk natural products industry. Okay, so, to keep up with and be ready for what’s next in this industry what are you reading? Who are you listening to? What are you watching? Who do you follow other than us, obviously?

Amanda Ballard: 42:38

So I actually don’t really follow anyone in particular in the natural product space, more so lately been paying attention to just marketing information in general, that’s not industry specific. Current favorite person is Mike McCallow. It’s you kind of introduced me to him, so thank you. So I’ve been reading pretty much every book that he has lately and I just think he’s Really really intelligent and and funny. Yes, um, the other person I will say that I’ve recently discovered well, it hasn’t been that recent, but um hit on Instagram. His handle is Flav City. His name is Bobby yeah, bobby, something. He produces some really good content and I think he’s just really fun to watch and has a lot of really good insight about just the health. You know the status of health foods in our country. You know Going into the grocery store and thinking something’s healthy and it actually not being the healthiest for you. So he’s been an account that I’ve really enjoyed following lately, just to see you know what’s what’s Bobby approved, because that that’s something that you know he’s very popular on Instagram and so if it’s, you know, maybe Bobby approved, it’s like maybe that’s something that we should consider. You know, promoting Um, not necessarily using his slogan, but you know people see his content, then it’s like, well, we’re talking about that same product too, and so it’s just that, that multiple points of contact.

Tina Smith: 44:17

Yeah, and I love something that you’re sort of pointing to here two things you are looking outside of the industry for ways that you can improve this industry, so translating something from one industry to another is One way to differentiate yourself, so it is good to be paying attention to things that are outside of here. Other thing is, um, it’s great to know if your clients are, or your customers are, listening or watching things like Bobby, because then you can follow them and the promos that you put on your schedule Can align with the kind of content that they’re producing, because if you’re watching it and your clients are watching it, then those are the types of things that are going to be top of mind for them. So, right, that just brings up a really good point about talking to your customers about who are you following, what are you doing? Um, and then speaking their language. Yes, yes, you can be in touch with that and start to do products and services that are based around things that are top of mind. Okay, so what do you think most people in the natural products industry wish they could change about marketing.

Amanda Ballard: 45:26

I know what I wish I could change. Okay, um, I wish we could go back to the uh, the good old days when, uh, google and facebook liked us. So those days are gone, unfortunately. So trying to come up with, uh, creative ways to get the word out Using social media and, you know, seo and all of that to make sure that your content is more accessible To the masses Um, I do miss that and I wish I had a solution, but at this time, um, we’re still working on it, but I think that’s something where you know, at least on the seo side, you know, partnering with someone like you that can get creative and figure out, you know, maybe, if we do these, these keywords, like and just identifying that stuff, um, so you know, this keyword is doing really, really well right now. Make sure you write a blog on that. All that kind of stuff is really really helpful, um, so that’s something that I wish I could change, um, but I don’t have the power at the moment, yeah, and you know, I do think that’s something that will address in a future episode.

Tina Smith: 46:32

What are some creative ways around that? Because we found some Um and it’s not that they’re necessarily easy or that they’re an overall fix, but I do think that there are some ways that, um, you can combat that, uh, even in today’s algorithms. So we will talk about that on the future episode. For sure. Um, what’s the single biggest decision you feel like has led to your success in this industry?

Amanda Ballard: 46:58

I think just being willing to try new things, um, whether it be taking a new supplement or um Just coming up with an off the wall idea that you know had never been tried in our business and just seeing if it worked, um being willing to take risk, and I think it is easier, um, when you’re an employee and it’s not your own money Um, to take risk. If you are, you know, an owner of a store and it’s your Money on the line, it is a little bit scarier. So I do appreciate, you know, being an employee sometimes and not necessarily being the business owner, um, but I think you know risk doesn’t always have to be a huge monetary risk, um, you know it’s more. Maybe it’s more the risk of your time, um, which I mean your time is very valuable, but um, but yeah, I think I wouldn’t be where I am without being willing to take risk and also stretch yourself. Um, I think it’s really easy to get you know put in a box and I think, again, it kind of goes back to I’ve been fortunate to have um people in my life that have been willing to invest in me and Me just take the time to say, hey, you know, I don’t know a lot about accounting, but I think it would be helpful to learn more about accounting. So you just Like learn how to use quick books and it’s like it’s not necessarily relevant to my job as a marketer, but now I have a skill, you know, albeit not I’m not an expert in quick books or whatever it might be. Um, you know, learning how to use wordpress. I had never used wordpress before. Just learn, like, try new things, and then something just clicks and it’s like, oh, I’m actually kind of good at that. Um, so I think just be willing to step out of your comfort zone and learn new things and just see where it takes you.

Tina Smith: 48:52

You might discover that you’re really good at something you never thought you would be good at yeah, and that just makes me think of you said that you were an employee and it made you more willing to take risk than maybe a business owner would be, and it reminds me of something that you’ve said before, which is talk to your employees to help generate these creative ideas. Tell them you know what’s the end goal, but then creating or generating ideas around how to deploy that, especially when it comes to some of these campaigns where you’re working with vendors. You have a body of ideas, but if you talk to the employees that work for you with you on the floor, they’re boots on the ground and they probably have a better idea of what the customers want sometimes, or?

Amanda Ballard: 49:36

how the?

Tina Smith: 49:36

customers will better interact with that campaign. Yep, absolutely. So always a good idea to talk to your employees. Okay, so what do you think is the biggest challenge for this industry walking into the next three to five years?

Amanda Ballard: 49:49

The biggest challenge is going to be to stay um, to stay innovative with Um experience and I know we’ve talked about this um. I think e-commerce isn’t going anywhere, but I think the people crave Doing something fun and making shopping fun Um, yeah, something that’s gonna make you wanna get off the couch. So if your business, if you have a brick and mortar location, how are you going to stay afloat? And I think the biggest thing is offering an experience that no one else can offer in your area. I think that there’s a reason why, like, target is a nice store. But there’s something about when I go to Target and I can’t just put my finger on it, but it’s like I feel like it’s just a really nice place to shop and I can almost relax while I shop. It’s clean, they have cute things to look at, it’s not super expensive, it’s never really loud, it’s just it’s a nice environment. When I go into a whole foods, it’s like bright colors and I know everything is clean and organic and all the things. Like I know kind of what to expect. So being able to figure out what your experience is and just lean into that and then tell that story through your marketing of when you come here, when you come to our store, it feels like family or whatever it is. Come to our store and experience the best tropical smoothies of your life. Whatever, it is something that is going to just create that experience because, like I said, e-commerce isn’t going anywhere. So if you are just so concerned about people buying products online, give them a reason to come into your store.

Tina Smith: 51:55

People are craving some personal touch as well, so even some of that can just be in building relationships with the people that come in, and that might be why some people are still coming into your store to buy a product.

Amanda Ballard: 52:10

Right, even if it’s not a great atmosphere. It’s like, well, I love Beth, she is great and every time I come in she just treats me like I’m the queen of the world and I just feel so just blessed to be with her. Every time I’m with her, it’s like if you can even just hire the right people maybe right now you don’t have the money to renovate your store, that’s okay, but just work with what you have.

Tina Smith: 52:42

So I think personal touch is an experience, and then you can create other experiences as well. So that will be great. That’s how you compete with an e-commerce store and, you’re right, that’s not going away anytime soon. So what do you wish more people in this industry would try when it comes to marketing their natural products? Business.

Amanda Ballard: 53:04

So many people just get stuck in what they’ve always done. We’ve only ever done Facebook. It’s like, have you tried Instagram? Maybe it might work for you. We’ve never tried coupons before. Maybe coupons would work really well for you. I don’t know what to say on an email. Just try, like. I think that’s the thing is, people just they’re scared of trying new things, and but it almost becomes addicting. Once you start, it’s like, hey, I tried this thing and I’m learning from it. And then, once you start getting on a roll, it’s like I feel like I’m, you know, maybe not mastering this, but I’m getting good at it. And then it’s like, okay, what’s another new thing that I could become good at? And then you pretty soon have this just marketing machine where you know it’s okay if your Facebook posts, it just flops because you know you had this really great email campaign but you know, maybe three years ago you weren’t doing anything with email, but now you have this whole new thing. So I think it’s just being willing to try and invest the time in trying.

Tina Smith: 54:16

When we’re talking about, like, partnering with vendors. They are a perfect place to get some ideas for things that might work that you haven’t tried before, exactly, so that can also be a way to tie in exactly what we were talking about earlier into this. So okay, low hanging fruit, what things do you think would give most people in the natural products industry quick wins in building their business today?

Amanda Ballard: 54:40

Something as simple as a quick little incentive to maybe have them give you a piece of data that you can use, like an email address, in exchange for you know, here’s a free bottle of vitamin D. If you give us an email like it could just be something as simple as that, where it’s like a bottle of vitamin D cost you $3, depending on what it is, that is nothing to give that away. You know, do something where you can get some sort of info from your customer so that you can then start reaching them in other ways. And I think I mean an email address is worth what’s the going figure now? Like about $35. Yeah, I mean it’s stupid not to invest even just something like $5 to get an email from a customer. Like that could be a potential customer for life. And I mean you could do something as simple as you know, maybe having a prompt on your register when someone comes in, like maybe you have a little reminder ask them if it’s their first time here. Maybe you have a customer employee, or maybe you get email addresses at the register. If they are a first time customer, give them a goodie bag Like that’s not just like a little sample, like a one single pill and like a bunch of literature, like make it substantial, make them feel really, really special, because again it kind of just goes back to that experience. You know, and again going back to this co-op advertising thing, go to your manufacturers and say, hey, whenever we have a first time customer, because that customer is worth a lot of money to us and we want to hold on to them for dear life, what can we do to put together an awesome gift bag for all of our new customers? You know, maybe you invest the money in printing some really nice reusable bags and then you talk to your vendors and you get, you know, a bottle of a multivitamin, a vitamin D and a greens powder, and they get that as a free gift. It’s like that’s, you know, $70 worth of product plus a really nice branded reusable bag that you just gave to a customer at no cost to you because you’ve worked out a deal with your suppliers, and it’s like, wow, that’s amazing. I’ve never received such treatment like that before. You know, there’s so many things that you can do, but I think just a small incentive in store to capture that, you know, to capture that customer and make them feel like a million bucks.

Tina Smith: 57:15

Yeah, that sounds awesome. I would love that if I went to the store for the first time and they’re like here’s all your free stuff, welcome to being part of our family, and then I would be like I can’t ever leave, yeah.

Amanda Ballard: 57:27

So always shop here. It’s kind of like that building you know a reciprocity with people, like if you, if you went over and beyond for a customer, they’re gonna be like well dang, like now I feel like I owe you, even though they don’t. It’s like that was just so amazing, Like you just feel obligated to continue shopping there.

Tina Smith: 57:48

Yeah, because you feel valued and see to you. So, that’s huge. I love that idea. I think everyone should deploy that today, okay. So, amanda, if you want people to follow up with you to pick your brain about marketing natural products in their stores, how would they connect with you?

Amanda Ballard: 58:07

Yeah, just go to naturalproductmarketercom and fill out a contact form and I’ll be in touch.

Tina Smith: 58:14

Yeah, awesome. So Amanda is open to brainstorming with you about ways that you can build these vendor relationships and start having your marketing pay for marketing in your stores. All right, thanks, amanda. That was so great, such great ideas that I think everyone should start deploying in their stores today and hopefully be well hear back from people that they’re doing these things and that they have made a big difference in their sales.

Amanda Ballard: 58:44

All right, talk to you guys later, bye, bye. Thanks so much for listening to the Natural Products Marketer podcast. We hope you found this episode to be super helpful. Make sure you check out the show notes for any of those valuable resources that we mentioned on today’s episode.

Tina Smith: 58:58

And, before you go, we would love for you to give us a review. Follow, like and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, spotify, youtube or wherever you’re listening today, and make sure you join us for our next episode, where we give you more marketing tips so that you can reach more people and change more lives.