Tina Maddock: 0:00

What did we promise the other business that we would do to advertise this and to maybe bring business their way? And then what did we give them to help them bring people in?

Jamie Brown: 0:14

We um started out by making a marketing checklist so that we could kind of create a roadmap for them and a timeline for everything so that it wasn't confusing at all. Um it was really all spelled out and easy to use.

Tina Maddock: 0:30

Welcome to the Natural Products Marketer podcast. I'm your host, Tina Matdock. On this podcast, you'll hear from manufacturers, retail owners and operators, and other business experts that will help you grow your business so you can serve more people and change more lives. Hi there and welcome to another episode of Natural Products Marketer. And today I am joined by Jamie, who does all the work behind the curtain and doesn't usually like to come out and chat with everyone. Is that right?

Jamie Brown: 1:03

That's correct.

Tina Maddock: 1:05

I tortured her into being here today. So um anyway, I'm sure that everyone's gonna be excited to hear what you have to say because really Jamie is putting the things together. And so half the time I come up with these crazy ideas and then Jamie executes them, or she'll come back to me and say, Hey, that isn't working like what you thought you wanted to do here. This is not working. Let's we gotta do something different. So um you're the person putting all the process pieces together, and um, you can see what's happening real time better than I can. I'm looking at reports like stock ticker tape, trying to see if we're making any money for people, but um, you're seeing like whether or not the the items that we're putting into systems are working and whether or not there's any snags or anything. Um, so and the reason that we're talking about this today is because we've talked a million times about partnering with other businesses that have similar audiences. Um and we have a resource called Business, I think it's business partnership opportunities, um, where we're giving you a step-by-step of how we suggest reaching out to your neighbor businesses. Local is best. Um, although if you have some online ways that you can serve the same groups, then that's also a great idea. But I wanted to talk about a specific case study where we just started loading people up with events by reaching out to business partners. Um, we've talked about this a lot, but very few stores allow us to execute this from start to finish on their behalf. And uh, we had a store allow us the opportunity to do everything from the outreach through to planning the events. We have not been on location while the events have happened, but um, they allowed us to do everything else email marketing, ads. Um, and so I wanted to go through like what did we do and how did we find the people? How did we know they were the right people? And then what's happening in the store as we went, but just a little background quickly. Um, this store's been down about 12% year over year this whole year. And one of the things that we've been poking them to do, and and that loss started, I mean, they started seeing year over year trending down around March of this year, and it's a weird year. Um, I think everyone can agree with that, but um, people are hanging on to essentials, and so we have to figure out ways to help people see your services or or your products as essential and also to reach new people who just haven't bought before, don't even know you're there. Like, how can we get in front of new audiences? And a lot of times people are trying to do that one-to-one, like they're trying to digitally pick up a new person here and there who is starting to get to know them online. And that takes a long time. It's it does work, but it does take a lot of time building these audiences up over time. And one of the things that we've talked about getting a big bang for your buck is reaching out to a similarly situated business who is in front of the same types of customers that you work with, and then having them market for you while you're also marketing for them and creating a little reason for someone to come in by creating an event, an activity, or something educational for people. Um, so with this particular store that we're talking about, just spoiler alert, they've ended up last month they were up 12% year over year, when it's been a very down year. And um, they are trending to be up over this year and over the previous year before that. Um so how did we find these people, Jamie?

Jamie Brown: 5:20

Well, I think that a lot of people already know these people in their community or already have a connection. Um, so it might seem like a daunting task to have to reach out to everyone, but chances are they already know people that they can connect with, whether it is just a local business that they frequent, or if it's people that they've met at networking events, or even maybe um other business owners are coming into their store already to um purchase product um or services. So uh we have done some extra research to try to find other people in the community um that we can reach out to, but the um business that we were talking about already had a great start, like a list of people that they were ready for us to reach out to.

Tina Maddock: 6:20

Yeah. And you know, I think about a year ago, maybe, correct me if I'm wrong on this, they had a business that came to them that probably was not exactly their customer, but um active lifestyle customer who had come to them and asked to do some sort of pairing with them, and they kind of put them off, put them off, put them off. And so, but the fact that someone was interested in doing um a co-sponsored event uh kind of got the wheels turning. And finally, when they were ready, and I really think the only barrier to making this happen was the business owner's time. She was feeling like I'm gonna have to do everything all by myself and I don't have time to reach out and follow up with people. Um, but the minute that they started talking about doing things like this, they did have people from their customer base and community start to reach out to say, you should have this person, or I'd love to be part of this. Um so we started adding those to the list, but also we did a little research, just Google Maps, say same area. Like, what are some other locations in the area that we could just reach out to to the business owners? And we've got some other tools where we can find like phone numbers and that sort of thing. But really, I just said to the business owner, all right, you keep putting this off because you're not gonna do it. Let us do it, start to finish. Just reach out to these people, set everything up for you, and then you just need to show up for the event. Can we do that? And she finally gave us some dates that would work. I'm guys, we're only doing like two events a month here. And we set up, I think, three or four to start with, and now we've got more people coming in. So I think if we if you're going to look for people, the first place I would look is um, like like you said, Jamie, you you've got people that are you're going to their location already. And for most people, you are part of your target market, or you wouldn't have started a store in the first place. So if you just think about places that you frequent, your other customers are probably frequenting there as well. You could start there. Um, but the other places to um to start is to ask your customers, maybe your very favorite ones, like who do you use for X service? And some ideas of things. Like we have put on the menu meditation, breathing exercises, some education around self-defense. Um, and I think we're gonna do some hormone education. Um, and the minute that we said we have a lineup, we've got this activity, it's gonna happen twice a month, and we've got a lineup already. Then we also had other people from the community reaching out and saying, Hey, can I get put on the list? So I think it all works that way. And Google, I mean, Google Maps is a great place to start. And um I do find from other business owners that they feel intimidated by doing the outreach. So tell us from your perspective, you're making phone calls to reach out to these people, and some of them are already interested, so that's great, but let's talk about people who aren't. Like, what how does the conversation go? What do you say to them for people to start being like, hey, I want more information about what's going to happen? Tell me more.

Jamie Brown: 10:06

I think that once you start out letting them know that you're a local business, that helps. So they don't think you're calling from, you know, wherever. And it starts the conversation whether um they've already been to your establishment or they probably know where you're located. And then it was just a matter of, hey, do you want to partner with us on this? We will give your audience some incentive also to come in, which is huge. Um, for this particular client, we offered 10% off of our packages to um their the presenter's audience. Um, and that was you know big for them and also helped to increase sales for our client as well. Um, so I think dangling an incentive carrot isn't a bad thing. And then um really it was just committing to a date, and a lot of people agreed right on the spot, whether it was through phone call or just outreach through email. Um and I think there was only one business we talked to that noodled on it for a while and then decided not to um participate. And that was one out of you know, like 10 people that we had already spoken to.

Tina Maddock: 11:41

So this was really quite high. Yeah, that's a really huge take rate on that. So, and and we developed some scripts, they're super simple. It's not a difficult conversation, it's a give-give conversation, a win-win, if you will. Um, because also the things that we're talking about is um we're going to talk about you to our audience of X people are on our email list. We've got this many followers on social media. Um, we're gonna add it as a Google event on Google Business. We're gonna add it on our website. So we have a list of things that we're gonna do to sort of advertise the event. We ask them to do something similar. So we say, send this out to your group. And if it's kind of a local business that doesn't have a huge email list or something like that, we're saying put it on your personal Facebook page. Just help us advertise or share what we're posting, which boosts the algorithm, just have it show up again in your location. And um, when I talked about ads earlier, on the first event, we did a little bit of advertising, but it was$2 a day for two weeks as a boosted post on Meta. And we, of course, we did emails um and that sort of thing, but we didn't even boost a post for the second um the the second event. And the first event, I think we we had a limitation. Like there were only so many people that could fit in the space we were using. So the first event we capped it off at 30. I think we ended up with like 35 people signing up, but 30 made it into the room. So it was perfect um for that event. Second event, really, we didn't there's still some space limitations, but we didn't um put a real cap on it. And 54 people signed up. And that's the thing, just when you're thinking about it, everyone who signs up is not gonna come. But you know, having 54 people sign up and over 40 walk into the room is really great for an educational event. But plus, there's other people that signed up, now they know about you. And I'm gonna say it was um probably 30% new people never been to the store before. There were um probably 15, 20% recaptures who hadn't been in a while. And when I say a while, I mean like a year or more people hadn't come in. And then you're attracting also your own audience. Um, maybe people who don't come that often. They're coming into the store, but but you're kind of regulars, you're you're adding them too, but just makes them more sticky to be there. And just I think some of the other um the other the sales went up, the people started coming to the store more often because they could see that things were happening at the location. So it just felt like there was some different energy and that it brought more people into the store, which is a big deal. More foot traffic equals better sales, better revenue. Um, so I think all those things were working together, but those were kind of the numbers that we were seeing from one of the first events, and similar on the second event. There were signups, these are the amount of people that came, you're reaching new people from the other uh businesses, Rolodex, and then you're attracting some of your own and recapturing people who maybe haven't been in a really long time. Um, so let's talk about like what were all the tactics that we used? What did we promise the other business that we would do to advertise this and to maybe bring business their way? And then what did we give them to help them bring people in?

Jamie Brown: 15:52

Yeah, so we um started out by making a marketing checklist so that we could kind of create a roadmap for them and a timeline for everything so that it wasn't confusing at all. Um, it was really all spelled out and easy to use. And then we made sure that we um created email templates, social media templates um along with the graphics. And we also created um some collaterals like posters, um, postcards that people could hand out at their own events um or even just at their store at the register or something like that. Uh we also made sure um that we, like you had said before, were posting the event to the Google My Business profile. And uh we created a Facebook event for the most recent event that we did. Um and we tie it all up into a nice bow so that it's easy to follow in a document and you can just click and get what you need. And not only do we provide templates on how to speak to the presenter, but also how they're gonna communicate with their audience. So um the templates that they need to send out that they can use on their social media, um, that they can send out to their mailing list. And then what we promised was to do pretty much the same. So we were sending out um to our email list, uh, you know, introducing the events, the reminder, you know, that it's coming up, and then also posting on the social media channels that were available. And we did the work posting for like Google My Business and the Facebook event. Um, but it was pretty much the same content that we had already supplied to them.

Tina Maddock: 17:59

Yeah, and I just want to be a couple of things come up for me here because people have tried, you know, kind of following our plan to do outreach to businesses, and some of them stumble over the script and some of them are fine with that, but then they forget to make it so easy for the other business to bring people to the event or to announce it and just get some traction out of um whatever's happening in their business, whether it's just an online store and they just have a social presence, or whether or not they have a physical location where people are coming in and out, that there are materials for them to see that the person who owns their store or someone who has some subject matter expertise is going to be in a different location. Um, so the easier you can make it for people, the more likely they are to follow the process and advertise on your behalf and bring new people to your location. And I do remember that we received emails back from some of these presenters who were thrilled that we had done all this work for them. They were like, oh my gosh, you guys made this so easy.

Jamie Brown: 19:17

Yeah, and speaking of follow-up, I mean, that's something that we didn't touch on, but we also that's part of um the outreach, too, is once the event is done, we like to send an email to the presenter, um, the person we're collaborating with, just to get an idea of how the event went and what feedback they got. And, you know, if if this is something they're interested in doing in the future. And then also from the attendees, we got some feedback, which is a great way, um, obviously, to make things more enjoyable and run smoother in the future, but also. to um you know get testimonials for your website that you can use for your marketing social media um and then also the most recent person that we had has already been collaborating directly with the um with our client for more you know more stuff like they're brainstorming like well this worked really well why don't we do this in the future so it's leading to more um more in that connection is already there so I feel like it's much easier for them to communicate and collaborate on that yeah and you know just thinking about this the most recent uh event that we did the presenter kept asking things like how do I make this easier for you um which gave us ideas too because it was like oh well if you could make sure that you give us these materials then we'll be set if there's any restrictions like you know the first class it was like we only have room for this many people because of the interaction that the presenter wanted.

Tina Maddock: 21:08

So just knowing those things ahead of time which can make things feel more exclusive anyway. But I remember after the first event and we did outreach to everyone who attended, they gave rave reviews like so happy that that happened and can you put this on the agenda more regularly to the point that the business owner is now contemplating scheduling something regularly with a fee because people were so jazzed about the experience that they had in that educational class. So we it's a possible that this could lead to extra services that generate income. Right now we're offering these as free events um whether it's something participatory or it's something educational. And I'll tell you I think the ones where there's some participation that it works better. So when we're talking about guided breath work or meditation those sorts of things really kind of hit the um nail on the head because people like to have some sort of interaction. And I think you know some of these classes have been for a specific thing like guided breath work to release something or meditation to overcome past trauma. So you even have a more focused like people know if it's for them kind of activity. And um you know we're gonna be talking about hormones and I think it's gonna specifically be around paramenopause hormones that kind of thing so it'll it seems niche but people have been coming out of the woodwork for um for these educational events. So and it can lead to other services that drive revenue but um I do think it's also just that every the um presenters have been super happy because they have been able to say they have sort of an exclusive discount for a period of time and we do put a time limit on it that you can use their code to get a specific discount. And um it makes it feel like oh I can take something to my customers that they really can't get anywhere else. So that that's an extra reason that someone would be willing to do this um type of co-opt activity. But making it easy is really important. And I also love that we were able when we got the feedback um from the participants that we are giving those testimonials also to the other business owners so they can use it on their website. So again the more that you can kind of make this a win-win for everyone the more people are going to be willing to participate and the first few events you just have to talk to the next people about hey we had this many people show up here's the percentage of people that were from our group of customers so they can see they're getting a benefit from your customers as well as you would be getting some benefit from theirs. So the more you can just frame that conversation around what they can expect. If you do all these things that we've got outlined on our little plan here, you can expect this to be happening at your store, your place of business um so I think it's just makes it such an easy sell for more people to come in there. Okay so we've been through like what did we promise what did we provide how did we get this out in front of people I want to hit on the ads just for a second because we did do this on the first event and then the second event just started it came out of the gate running so there was no need to do ads related to that but um creating the right audience on Meta was important so that you don't have to spend so much money for it to learn. What we did was upload a client list like best customers over the past 90 days people have come in and spent over a certain amount of money loading that list into Facebook and then also giving it a very focused geographic location. If you're not online only it's really great for you to be able to narrow that down to within five to 10 miles of your store for the money to be most effective. So you you load up the list you're gonna be advertising to your list two to three bucks a day is what we were doing with that. As well as saying on top of that Facebook create a lookalike list but but limit it to this five to 10 mile zone around my store because most people that are coming into stores are it's limited to about five to 10 miles. If you do a lot of events though you can pull people in from over 30 miles away that kind of thing but you're mostly going to be seeing people five to 10 miles away but I think you can keep your budget really low on meta ads if you put this in front of the right audience that's very limited in scope. So limiting it to a lookalike audience of your best customers and within a geographic space makes a ton of sense. And then you know most advertising systems are going to ask you for thousands of dollars a month and I don't think you need to do that if you're on social media enough participating once a week twice a week on these meta platforms or even YouTube is a great one as well. And then you just spend a couple bucks a day with the right audience and you should be able to attract quite a few people um okay so that that's a little bit about attracting people to the event we talked about our follow-up so we have followed up through email regarding um this give us some feedback that was our first outreach the next is if they have not purchased a membership which some people did immediately um or you know haven't purchased any product then that's you know the the next thing that you would do if they haven't spent money with you this is your opportunity to remind them about that small window that they have say you participated here's the code um and get a discount off of your purchase and so that's follow-up two and then follow up three is hey here's our next event so you're probably having something in the next two weeks if you've done the lineup correctly it might be in the next month so maybe you're gonna do this once a month but just remind people hey here's our next event would love to see you and go from there because then then it's the hey we have the event it's a reminder and this gives you a good um focused audience to start emailing to once a week once every two weeks with something that they're already interested in and coming to do um all right what else how else have we have we worked to do some follow-up on this or or what are you seeing that we probably should be doing that we haven't done yet um well I'm not sure if you did I haven't personally followed up with our client yet to get a lot of feedback but I think you had done that with with them um so that's important too because you want things to work well and be beneficial you don't want it to be something where it caused a huge headache uh you know because this is supposed to be something fun and something to get people in the door and um so that's great that you did that I will be part of that you know going forward and I think that that's important as well. Yeah let's talk about the client for a minute because there was such hesitation in the beginning right and we were struggling to get like calendar dates but um and you have to have that someone's got to be at the store because we're just not geographically there.

Jamie Brown: 29:52

We can do everything else but being in the store to do the event is not something that we offer but tell me like the easiest for you what makes it so easy for you to do the outreach and then schedule everything and tie it off with a bow what do you need from the client what do I need from the client okay so the the schedule obviously the dates are most important because that has to really match up with what's easiest for them and what makes the most sense for your you know customers or clients whoever's coming in the door you know this particular client we wanted to make sure it was right after a class when you already have people in um you know in this particular um environment was the studio so when people are in the studio already they can just come right after class and it's you know a little bit easier for some people to get there invite a friend um or family member um and I think really just um preferences after that you know like is there a max amount of people do you not want um anyone you know in the space that's over 45 people or some odd amount and then do you have any restrictions like um or add-ons that need to be thought of so for example with this particular client um you know you needed a mat and you needed to purchase that if you didn't have one you needed to purchase it for an add-on so just things like that where we could just give people all the information up front so nothing's a surprise when they walk in the door.

Tina Maddock: 31:57

Which works better so this kind of brings me to um Jamie like it works best if you have a way for people to register for the class, the event. Yeah. Because um then you can remind them first of all but secondly and and you're reminding people that are very interested but second you can be like hey don't forget these are the items you're gonna need or this is what you can expect from the experience we're gonna be spending this much time doing this this much time doing that or whatever or hey you you're gonna need some things we have a minimum amount to offer anything you also have to purchase for X dollars if there's some sort of interactivity and you don't have enough materials that kind of thing but um though those are the kinds of things to prepare for so having a way for people to register is important. Even if it's you keep it on a list you know you're writing it down every time that someone's like I'm coming you can have them email you you know it you it doesn't have to be a formal like form for them to fill out but it does make it easier if they can just click a button and be like I'm in um and also yeah go ahead sorry I was just gonna say then then that gives you you know their email and their contact information for future yeah communications too you know even not related to the event so that's important information to have. Yeah also just the follow-up you know and tracking who came and who didn't because you can send two different tracks of messages out of we're so glad that we had you there. Everyone had a great experience tell us more about yours to hey we hate that we missed you thanks for signing up you can still enjoy all of these benefits or discounts or whatever it is that you want to talk about um you were talking about like making sure that you're scheduling it at a time that's good for the customers one way to do that is you know what when is a busy time like what's right after some of your busy moments um where you know flows kind of going down but people might be around a little bit earlier and you can keep them hanging out a little bit longer um because of coming in that time we had one client um who was really working on like children's products and um they had morning events like with children that were not in school at the time and um you know so they're already up and they're fed and they're ready to go and but it's before nap time and so if that was your audience was to get in you know young moms that were you know catering to their children then that's you know the morning time worked better for them. So it's just all based on whomever you're trying to reach and we help to you know discuss that with them and figure out what's best it's you know as a support um they don't have to do that all on their their own yeah yeah and I I mean if you remember being a busy mom you often look for ways that to occupy your children's time without you having to set up an entire event yourself uh reading days at the library are fun um bubbles in the park like if there's a way that you can have an organized activity where you might be able to just sit back and be like for a minute then that's great too. But yeah so back to having conversations with a client yes I'm I'm the one that's on the front line of doing that. I know that you guys are in contact typically about scheduling and everything but from the client's perspective um like I said number one the biggest fear was I'm gonna have to do this all by myself and I'm zapped because I'm doing things like buying toilet paper and just keeping the lights on in this place which we've everyone that's listening has experienced those days. And then we're telling you hey you can grow your business just spend a few more hours on it and so yeah this is like oh no so I think her initial response was yes we need to grow but I I'm maxed out like what am I gonna do? So this has been a lifesaver for her to have someone else making these connections and helping things happen. And then after the first event I debriefed with her immediately the next day and had a conversation about oh I wish I would have had this or known this thing either from the presenter or from a logistics perspective. It would have been easier if and fill in the blank. So we have those conversations after the event and then we can add to our checklist oh yeah that would make it easier for everyone if we had this information ready. Um so it just helps us shore up any missing pieces that will make it easier for everyone. And overall I mean she has felt like it's just brought a bit of energy into the store that she wasn't feeling there before. And um so I think she's really excited about the fact that that many people are willing to come at a time when they're not typically open and hang out and then end up becoming customers and that kind of thing. So she's been thrilled around that and around the volume of people we've talked to people who have worked on these types of things before and usually the first event or two. And I I think too Jamie like the the first event that she did on her own which made her really leery of of doing this at all by the way because she tried to do an event on her own and I think three people came and she was like I'm not doing all this work for that. But and and that's why it's just when you have the right full marketing plan around this it works. But if you're just trying to sort of make it happen on the side it's not as fruitful for sure. Um so you you know that's why we've made a whole plan around it and we can share those resources with you guys if you're interested um just shoot us an email info at naturalproductsmarketer.com we're happy to share our resources for business partner um opportunities but also we're here to help if you'd like to try this out um I think the most successful way to do it is to try it for 90 days. And there's a little bit of a buildup you probably need a month a month and a half to get ready for it and do the outreach to put a big plan together. I remember there was at one point we were kind of getting squirrely on the on the dates when we first started and you were like okay no we need at least two more weeks or three more weeks or whatever so that we can do all the activities that will make this successful. So we can tell you guys like having things planned a month in advance really makes it a lot easier to get people interested in coming. So you know the the runway to get this started is a month, a month and a half um to to put the agenda in place and then to start marketing it and then Probably two months in, you can start having your events after everything's set up. And then you just keep adding on to the back of it, having more and more events. But to be the most successful, we'd say if you wanted our help with something 90 days, um, let's do a 90-day plan of events. And again, we're only doing two a month. Um, so it's once every couple of weeks, but you could do one a month if you wanted. Um, or every week. You can do something where it's just sort of expected, you've got a new thing going on once a week. Um but I think the two weeks has been really nice because it gives people a minute to breathe in between the activities that are happening.

Jamie Brown: 40:43

Yeah, and it helps, it helps to be able to get out the email communications and social media posts without it being like on top of each other. Yeah, without it being too too much information coming at everybody at once. And now is a great time because if you're planning, you know, for the new year, now would be a great time to do that and start setting up stuff in January and February.

Tina Maddock: 41:14

Yeah, totally agree. Hit the new year running. Um, and you know, we've planned around different holidays and everything with this particular store, and it's still working. Yeah. So do this yourself or have us help you do it, or have someone else help you do it, whatever you do. I think just having events in at your location where you're partnering with another business is a great way to get in front of a lot of people at one time without having to do a ton of work because it's you might do a little bit of work on the front end, like getting things together, but once you put it in place, kind of a process that just sort of works by itself and generates other activities and business ideas and audience, all sorts of things. So I think you just can't go wrong with reaching out and doing these business partnership opportunities.

Jamie Brown: 42:13

I think that it has been really beneficial for everyone involved, the business owner, the person presenting, and the people coming. So it really is like a win for everybody.

Tina Maddock: 42:26

Yeah. And if you've got some giveaways you can give while people are there, even better. Um, I think that just makes everything a little bit more sticky. But this will also evolve, like as we do more of these um from start to finish for people, then I know that we'll come up with more ideas. I am full of ideas. Um and Jamie's like, oh no, we're adding them.

Jamie Brown: 42:53

I love ideas. Good, I'm ready.

Tina Maddock: 42:56

Okay. Well, that in a nutshell, that is how we are growing another business 12% year over year, right here, October, November time, where things are trending back up in stores a little bit naturally. But for someone who was had really lost a ton of momentum in this very strange year economically, um, where people are really focusing on necessities versus doing things that feel like you can toss them if you don't need them. Um, this has been a real win for a store who really needed it uh this year. So highly recommend whether you do it yourself, you have someone else do it, or you give us a call and say, hey, guys, can you help us with this for 2026? We'd be happy to be your partner. But either way, just make sure you're having events in your store. It will increase your revenue. All right. Thanks for coming, and we will see you next time. Thank you so much for joining us for the latest episode of the Natural Products Marketer Podcast, where we're here to help you grow your business so you can serve more people and change more lives. If you have any questions that have come up during this episode or others, or there's just a retail challenge that you're facing today, I would love for you to reach out to us at info at naturalproductsmarketer.com. We're here to answer questions. But most of all, if you have a question, then another retailer probably also has that question. So we can bring experts onto the podcast to give you the information that you really need. And if you liked what you heard, give us a thumbs up or give us a review on uh YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening today. All right, it was great to see you.