Robyn Goldenberg
Robyn Goldenberg is the President of Strategy Leaders, helping established businesses grow sustainably by aligning strategy, capacity, and leadership—without sacrificing health, energy, or sanity.
Overview:
In this episode, Robyn Goldenberg joins the show to break down what founders should do first when marketing feels overwhelming. They cover why marketing gets unnecessarily complicated, how to choose the right channels based on where your customers live, and why “post and pray” creates stress without results. Robyn also explains what metrics matter, how to connect marketing and sales so both teams win, and what needs to change when a business wants to scale—or exit. If you’re trying to grow without burning out or chasing every platform, this episode lays out a calmer, smarter way to build momentum.
Transcript:
Robyn Goldenberg 0:00
How do you help those founders get off the ground? Well, the first thing I say is like, let's take a breath. Let's just, let's just calm it down, right? And I want to know what your customer is? Who is your customer? Where are they, right? That's really your first question. I think it's okay. Well, if I'm B2B, are my customers on TikTok or Pinterest? Probably not. They might be on there because they're looking for, like, paint colors, I don't know, but they're not on there to look for business things, but they're probably on LinkedIn, right? And so why don't we start there? Start where your customers live, where you know they are, and where you feel comfortable speaking. So not everyone is comfortable making reels or being on, you know, being that face, right video, but a lot of people are comfortable using ChatGPT to help them write text.
Kerry Guard 1:06
You and we're back. Welcome back to Back on Track. Today, we have Robyn with us, and we are going to unleash what it means to do all the marketing things and work with founders. And what I love about this conversation is that it's not my typical normally. I have a fractional marketing leader on, and we unpack where you need to start, how you need to get ready, and where you need to go. But Robyn brings so much more to the table in relation to coaching founders, and I look forward to unpacking that today. Robyn, welcome to the show.
Robyn Goldenberg 1:41
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Apologies if I get a little unhinged today. I love marketing, but I also hate it, so it'll be fun.
Kerry Guard 1:52
I think we all have a love-hate relationship that's true with it. Well, I want to dive right in there. You just open up a can of worms. Let's unpack it. I would love to know what you love about it and what gets on your nerves. Why? What's the friction? Yeah, start with what you love.
Robyn Goldenberg 2:09
Well, I love that marketing. You know, at any budget, you can do marketing. I love that. It makes it attainable for every brand, every company, every influencer, whatever you're trying to accomplish, like from grassroots all the way up to spending 1000s and 1000s of dollars on ads. You can do whatever you want, really, within reason, I guess, but it also, you know, really enables your sales. Marketing is a great way to drive growth in your business. The part that I don't like about marketing, or what really annoys me about marketing, is that everyone makes it so complicated, and so many marketing things out there, whether you're reading articles or watching videos or people, right, they're trying to get you to do everything all at once, and it just creates this mess, right? And it creates stress for business owners who are just trying to get their brand out there, get their voice out there, grow their business, and then you're creating this extra level of like, oh my god, I'm not on TikTok today. Is that gonna really shrink my ability to grow, or just these, like little things, and just, I find it so frustrating, so frustrating.
Kerry Guard 3:27
I gotta say, as a business owner and marketer, I can so feel that love-hate relationship of that, that founder feeling of, I need to be everywhere, and then my marketing brain, like, quieting it down, being like you're going to be okay. No, you don't. You're going to do these three things, and it's going to be amazing. I'd love to know from your standpoint, because I think we all struggle with this as founders. I'm lucky enough to have that marketing like Angel sitting on my shoulder telling me I'm going to be okay. All is right with the world. Not all founders have that. Most of them are more on the technical side. They're more on the product-building side. They're more on the IT side, some if we're talking about B to B Tech and SaaS, how you know? What do you say to those founders who are like you said, you said, any budget can work? So they come to you with a small budget and say, I just need to do something. But I feel like I got to be everywhere. How do you help those founders get off the ground?
Robyn Goldenberg 4:25
Well, the first thing I say is like, let's take a breath. Let's just, let's just calm it down. Right? And I want to know what your customer is? Who is your customer? Where are they? Right? That's really your first question. I think is okay. Well, if I'm B2B, are my customers on TikTok or Pinterest? Probably not. They might be on there because they're looking for, like, paint colors, I don't know, but they're not on there to look for business things, but they're probably on LinkedIn, right? And so why don't we? Are there, just like start, where your customers live, where you know they are, and where you feel comfortable speaking. So not everyone is comfortable making reels or being on insert, you know, being that face, right? But a lot of people are comfortable using ChatGPT to help them write text, right? So, something like LinkedIn or even Facebook, where you don't necessarily have to be on video, you don't have to have impressive visuals, stuff like that, is really easy to start with, and you can make it sound so good with AI these days. And just is a great I also like, I'm a LinkedIn fan girl, so, but you can start on these, like, really obtainable and free. And LinkedIn is mostly free, unless you want to upgrade your profile, you know, channels, and then go from there. Oh, well, actually, now I'm really comfortable. I've dipped my toes right into LinkedIn, into the marketing. Maybe I could write a blog or a newsletter or, you know, like, we can start to, like, step it up, instead of being like, well, now I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, X, I don't know, right?
Kerry Guard 6:22
Like, and just trying to go crazy, yeah, no, I love that. I found it for myself. Like, I, yeah, I sort of go through momentum waves of like, I can sit here and pump out 10 videos, and then I can, and then I can post them. And sometimes I'm like, all I can do is write today. And I need, I need my AI, my AI helper you do talk about, in doing my own sleuthing, this and in our previous conversation as well, this notion of post and pray. So how do you help founders in that regard, like you do need to show up on LinkedIn and you need to post, but how do you make it so that it's not intentional, yeah.
Robyn Goldenberg 7:05
So I actually have a pretty decent example, one of my newer clients. They had a marketing firm before me, and I could see that they're doing this, what I call post and price. So we just make graphics, we write some cutesy captions, and we just, like, put it on all the platforms and hope for the best. And when I did an audit for them, I, yeah, just Fingers crossed. Marketing. I did an audit for them. I was like, well, the branding looks inconsistent, right? Like, if I went and looked at this post and the next post and the next post, it just looks like different people got on Canva that day and just like, put some stuff together. But also, you're not getting any actual engagement or likes, shares, or comments. It's not leading to a booking or, you know, to your website, or they're not tracking that, whatever that might be. But as far as I can see, like it's just, we're just posting because you're paying them money, and they're like, this is what we're supposed to do. And so being intentional in your marketing is one, really starting with who your customer is. You have to understand that. But then I always feel like, in the beginning, less is more, right in marketing, even if you have a digital marketing company that was doing a lot, it's okay to scale it back and say, You know what, Instagram really likes. I love Instagram, but it's just because I like to scroll through some BS videos. But maybe that's not where I should spend my time as a business, because my customer isn't there, even though someone is telling me I should be on there. And it could also be because what I do isn't visually beautiful, right? Like, maybe I manufacture widgets, right? And that's just not a thing that goes on Instagram. It's not flashy cars or super yachts or beautiful scenery, like it just maybe isn't the right vibe, and so it's okay to do less, as long as you have the right tracking in place to know that it's working. And what I would say is, like a post, if we look at LinkedIn, two or three posts a week is probably fine, right in the beginning, and where I think people don't gain momentum on social media, for the most part, is they're not doing the other part, which is the social Part of social media, of like engaging with other posts, either as your brand or as you LinkedIn is very focused on the business owner or the person as the creator versus the brand, even though they give you the opportunity to make a company page. But if you're not in there. Or communicating with other people and not just liking right, like actually scrolling through, leaving a sentence, things like that, commenting, and not just you're losing reach, correct, you're losing opportunity.
Kerry Guard 10:16
Yeah, it's really hard. I'm not gonna lie. I'm with you, founders, if you're listening like, I know you're hardly, yeah, I'm sure there's like, some cringe happening in your body right now, like my daughter who watches old 90s sitcoms and wonders stood it, but it, it, it's an important hurdle to figure out how to navigate, for sure, for sure, LinkedIn. I mean, I've, I've hardly been posting, and I've hardly been engaged, and man, do my numbers show. What numbers do you look at, Robyn, to hope I do? Think that helps, like my itty, shitty, bitty committee is like hanging out with me right now, because I can see the numbers, I can see how bad it is, so I know that I need to get back on track. So what numbers do you use to help founders start to see the momentum and to feel proud of what they're doing to keep them going?
Robyn Goldenberg 11:05
Yeah, so I there's a lot of talk about vanity metrics, right? So eyeballs on your posts, engagements, views, whatever, if you don't already have that stuff coming to your profile, your posts, like people seeing your posts, and then suddenly you're getting more people seeing more eyeballs on your stuff. I think to myself, that's one of the likes, that's a little bit of a win, right? Like, I went from no one seeing my opost r like two people seeing my post, to like 100 people seeing them, to, you know, whatever that might be. And then from there, I think you just like, is your is, are your posts optimized then to book a call or go to your profile, and is your profile optimized to get to your website, right? So we can start to track that traffic, or like, the directionality, because that's how you know that people are like, Oh, that was an interesting post. I looked at it. Oh, she's really talking about something I'm interested in. Let me check out her profile, right? Especially on LinkedIn. You can see all that. You can see that they I'm not trying to turn this into a whole show on LinkedIn, but you can see like you're the one who drove X many engagements and two profile views or something like that. Then you can see, like, if you've got a link in your bio, it'll show you if people have clicked that link, and if it goes to somewhere in your website and they have to fill out a form, we can see that too, right, theoretically. And so it's just like tracking all these, the traffic, essentially.
Kerry Guard 12:45
Yeah, yeah, leading, let's debunk this now, because I know you normally get an opportunity to sort of stand on my high horse for a hot second and and correct the correct the myth, I guess. But I do think vanity metrics have gotten a bad rap, mostly because they have been misdefined Where technique, like I had an analyst who stood up in front of a room at a presentation and defined what vanity metrics mean, and I absolutely just loved this and why, and I would love Your take on it, too, Robyn, she compared it to a watermelon. And she's like, vanity metrics are the lovely green part of the watermelon where everything looks gravy, right? But actually, when you cut open the watermelon, and you see all of that red, things are not so gravy. And so I think people now have convoluted vanity metrics of everything looking green to the top-level metrics versus the bottom metrics, when actually it's just not showing the whole story of what's actually working versus not working. And so leading indicators are not vanity metrics.
Robyn Goldenberg 14:03
Not agree. I think the caveat there is like, I like the old, like standard marketing funnel, right? Marketing to sales funnel, right? And your van vanity metrics, your engagement, your impressions, your things like that. But it really is just your like, people are paying attention, right? It's your upper funnel. But at the end of the day, they become vanity if they're not ultimately driving to sales, right? So if they're just numbers to show numbers, but it doesn't actually convert, even if it's like 1000 views to get one, that's not a great one, but 1000 views to get 10 leads to your website, right? Then we know, okay, well, either we need to work on, how do we make it more engaging at the top, so that they want to convert, right? Or we just have a general understanding that it takes me 1000 views to. Get 10 actual leads, right? But you have to have an under you have to look at that. You can't just, I think what a lot of marketing agencies tend to do is show their clients, like, look at this. An amazing impression. You got like this. You got 10,000 impressions on this. But you're I had a prospect. I was talking to a customer business owner the other day, and from the outside, if I hadn't dug into kind of their point of sale system and things like that, I was like, yeah, it's a watermelon, right? Beautiful. I'm like, wow, I couldn't even help you, like, I can't even guarantee you that I get you 100,000 views on your posts. Like, I just can't, not gonna ever do that. But when I got to their website data and their actual res point of sale stuff was like a point 3% conversion, I was like, you're paying for them to just like, Oh, that's nice. I'll go to I'll go to the guy down the street because his website converts better, or whatever, whatever the issue is. But the marketing company is just looking at it like, Well, look, we did our job, which is, I will say, probably not their fault, because most business owners, when they work with digital marketing agencies, keep them out here, right? Not having conversations like these is my goal. This is how sales work. This is how my business actually functions, where they're just like, all you do is make Canva social media posts, and that's your job, and you stay in your little box, and I'll run my business, and then we get annoyed because it doesn't work, right? But your marketing agency is annoyed too, because I think generally, most marketing people want this to work because we do love and hate marketing. We really do want this to work for you, but it only works if you're willing to let us in.
Kerry Guard 16:58
Yeah, that's exactly why I created a new service line called marketing leader and activation. And why I love talking to marketing leaders like yourself, because they have to be they have to work together. And as agencies, I was trying to find a way to create that bridge for that exact reason, because we have to be brought in, and we have to be told what the bigger picture is, what the vision is, what the ultimate goals are, what other usually, as an agency, you're doing one specific thing too, right? You'll have multiple agencies, sort of each doing their own thing, and you need somebody to to be bringing those together to say how all these channels are working as a compounding system. So yes, I totally agree that agencies are constantly set up to fail. It's why we don't work directly with founders. We go, we would love to work with you. And here is our bunch of marketing leaders. Let's set you up. Let's get you in touch. Let's figure that out. For that reason, I totally love that and agree with that. Yeah, founders, we love you, and you're great at what you do, and it doesn't, it's okay, it's okay that marketing is not your strong suit. I'm a founder, and I'm a marketer, and I gotta tell you, I'm bringing in outside help to help me with my own marketing. It's just, it's just what you have to do. It's hard to market your own stuff that you need. It's not a failure. I promise. I promise. Although I tell you, I sometimes feel that way when you've talked about it. You said that you can do. Nope, we just talked about that. I'm going out of order here, folks. I'm trying to figure out where I am. Make sure we're not duplicating efforts. Let's talk about going more. We've talked very much about the small founder-led stuff that's not just what you do, that's not just where you sit. And so let's talk about the scale-up. Folks who are like, I got a thing, I got some budget, I want to like it is, it is go time. They have a sales team that's like sitting around waiting for those leads to come in. How do you help bring marketing and sales together? This is an age-old problem, or we've been. I can't believe I'm still talking about this. I've been doing this podcast since 2019, and I still can't ask this question, because it is, is still a problem. So how do you solve it?
Robyn Goldenberg 19:23
Well, you put the marketing people on the sales people and the run room, and you just tell them to fistfight. Just kidding, the salespeople will win because they are ruthless. Sorry, it's true. I'm married to one. I always tell people that I'm not. I tell people I'm not a marketer because I find I have a great team. I love my team. I love them, but they are just, they're so sweet, they're so nice, like, they're just, like, whatever you need, salesperson, I'll make you this brochure like they're not going to be like, Absolutely not. You don't need just a. Other random PDF, like, so what I tell people is, I'm a CMO, like, I'm not here to be I'm not here to be nice, like, I am nice mostly, but I'm here to make this work, and I will toe-to-toe with your sales people. And that's what marketing needs. Marketing needs someone to come in and say, Don't be Don't bully my people, right? Like I will speak to you directly, and then I will dispel the messaging downward. But we have to work together. Sales and Marketing traditionally are like in these silos, separately. Salespeople think marketing people are useless. Marketing people think salespeople are scary, and they never listen. It might be true, but what you need as a business owner is to say, like, I'm done with you playing your dumb games, right? Like we work together. This is a revenue generation department, that is our job is to generate revenue at the end of the day, we do it differently. We approach it from kind of like different locations. Also, side note, if your sales team is just sitting around waiting for leads to come in, they're not salespeople. They need to go do their jobs. That might get some ,that's a different soapbox to me. However, it really takes someone coming in and saying, talk to me about your sales process. Like, what are you seeing? Where I had this conversation with the head of sales for one of my clients the other day, I said, What do you need? So when you're out talking to these meeting planners or whatever, right? Like, what do you need from the marketing department in order to, like, really bring it home, right? And her response was, I never send them to our website, because it's terrible. Well, that is a marketing problem. It was really like a business owner's problem. Didn't want to put the money into a new website. But I said, Okay, that's my job, then, is to go like, rally for you, essentially to say, this is our priority. We've got to move the budget so that we can, like, your website is your brochure, essentially, right? So if your sales team can't send people to learn about you because they're worried like it looks bad and it makes them look bad, that is a problem, but you wouldn't know that if you're keeping marketing and sales separated, because I would have never had that, like a regular agency would have never had that conversation. They would have just said, Well, you know, you're getting a lot of engagement on your post graphic to your website, but they would have never known that I'm not even sending them there because, like, or I had a client, like, their sales person was making his own marketing materials because he didn't like the marketing materials that the other market, like the first agency had made. I was like, bro, you can't make your own things like, that's just not how this works. But that's the problem, right? So we can solve that for you, but you've Yeah, you have to instill confidence in the sales team that, like, we're here to actually work with you, not just like power in the corner and hope for the best.
Kerry Guard 23:19
I actually just got off the phone with my, you know, as a marketing leader myself, I have a few clients, and I called up the sales guy because he's like, I'm getting the wrong, not the wrong, but I'm getting a really hard ICP right now. Like, these folks are really hard to sell to. I don't know what's going on or, like, why they're showing up. And I was like, Okay, I need to figure out how to help them self-opt out. Let's hop on a call, and like, as we started working to like through his I was like, I'm sold to me. Like, let's just go through it. And I said, Okay, I need to do a better job on the website of helping people self-opt out by using language around premium, because they're shoppers. They're just comparing. They're the different services of what they're going to get from from one company to another. And I was like, your premium, and we need to just say that, like you're gonna pay the premium price, and here's why, and here's why it matters, and here's the value. And then hopefully you get less of those people and more of the right people, or if you get those people, they know what they're walking into. So into. So, totally agree that having those simple conversations took us 20 minutes, 20 minutes. I was like, I know exactly what I need to do. Don't you worry, I'm on it, Chris, so I love that. I think there isn't enough, you know, across the aisle sort of stuff happening, and then the same way of like, I'm here for you. So, how do I make your job easier? Because at the end day, you're sitting in the seat and you're doing the selling. So what's in your way? I Yes, yes to that 100%, you said you speak sales. What is you just said it one? Oh, well, I guess here's a bit. What is one? Question: A marketing lead should ask the top salesperson every Friday afternoon.
Robyn Goldenberg 25:04
That's a good question. Well, what I would say is, what leads did you close this week? Now, I will warn you that some salespeople may not be used to you asking those questions. Might be like, Why are you checking up on me? Like I do my job, right? Like they might get with you. But it really is like, what leads did you close? Tell me about them. I don't. I don't care. I mean, I care because I have an interest in this company growing, but I don't care that you only close two or two or one, but I want to know about that customer, right? What was the process? Where do you think that maybe some additional touch points prior to your close would have been helpful? And I also want to know, like, what didn't you close this week? And why not in an accusatory tone, not because I'm here to, like, check on you and make sure that you're actually valuable to the company, but because I want to know where we're missing things right, in the sales process, in the marketing and it could be that, like, hey, if we had one more email going out to them, like, even if it was just like, hey, I'm so excited to talk to you tomorrow, right? We can do that if we're missing, like, this one step, okay, well, they didn't, people didn't show up, right? Or whatever it might be. And then I think, you know, the other part is like, what are your goals for next week, right? Or the rest of this month? You know, you close two. Is your goal to close two every week? Is it just like, No, my goal is one, and I just happen to get an extra right so we can stay aligned in the direction that we're going. Because if your goal is to close five new sales, and you're only you're not closing any, or you're only closing one, and it's not a sales issue. My husband on the phone, then it's a marketing issue. We need to just come together and have the kind of these conversations.
Kerry Guard 27:23
Yes, I Yeah, exactly. I just got off this call, and that's exactly what I was trying to figure out. I'm not here to say you're not doing your job, you're not closing these, and why not? My job was to figure out why they aren't closing, and what's in your way, and how I can support you? So yeah, I think just building that rapport up front can and saying that up front, here's what I'm here to do. This is why I'm asking these questions. Is just the best way to disarm people and get to the root issue.
Robyn Goldenberg 27:50
So I will also tell you that, like as a CMO, my job isn't to report to other people except the owner or the CEO or whoever is the hearse holder, right? The decision maker. And I need access. I always tell my clients, you can't send me too much stuff. You can't give me access to too many things, right? Like, we have an NDA, I'm not going to go, like, tell people or show people your stuff, but, like, I want to see your QuickBooks. I want to track these metrics. I need access to these things because ultimately, my job is to talk to the owner and say, here's what's working in revenue, driving revenue, here's what's not working. Here's what we're going to do to fix it. And like, maybe you don't have, maybe we're bringing in, like, just a ton of leads and operations can't fulfill it, right? They've got customer fulfillment. You know, sales close, and then the next, like, we're actually losing them at the fulfillment, the beginning of fulfillment, because operations is behind, right? And so the more you know, as a head of sales, as a head of marketing, like, our job is to keep the customer forever, or however long they stay with us, not just close a lead, and I think like that's what makes marketing and sales, but marketing valuable to business owners. The most, I think, is retaining customers, because getting new customers is expensive, keeping an existing customer is free, almost, right? So, like, you gotta be kind of looking at both sides of the coin so important.
Kerry Guard 29:35
Absolutely, I think that's one of the reasons too, as to why I was like, we need, we need not like. We need a marketing leader in that seat to working directly with the founder, because they need access to that data. They should not be do, do not give your agency access to your QuickBooks. That's a terrible idea, correct? But if you have a marketing leader that you have an agreement with that, you can give that information to like I know. So I know that we close 20, 20% of revenue comes from past clients, right? And I know that because all of the financial stuff is in the CRM, it's all tied together as one system, and it's so powerful to be able to tie all that together to really know, to your point, is the free leads just sitting there newsletter, and the the automations are doing their job every Monday, when that newsletter drops, I know we're going to get three leads from it. It's going to be previous clients, right?
Robyn Goldenberg 30:30
I had a client. I have a client that they, I have a lot of clients in the limo, chauffeur, transportation, hospitality space, and they, one of my clients does wedding shows. So he takes his big vehicles to the wedding show, the bridal show, and whatever. And I think a lot of people will be like, Well, how many weddings did you book? Well, yes, that's important. Absolutely. Like, your purpose here is to get brides right, or their parents, whatever, to book wedding transportation. But what we found is that people who see them at the show are then booking nights out concerts like so we were able to track that customer that lead, so maybe they didn't book their wedding yet, right? And they're just there getting ideas. But in the meantime, you've established this trust factor with them, and so now they're like, you know, Post Malone is coming into town. I'm going to book a ride so we don't have to deal with parking, right? Or whatever, like, or, let's do our Bachelor Bachelorette, which is pretty obvious, but things like that, right? It's the kind of it's an upsell without an upsell, but you're now making a customer. So when they go to make that big purchase decision of wedding transportation, they are already going to come to you, but you spent money on but if you were just looking at how many weddings did I book from this wedding show? Yeah? That doesn't give you a clear picture.
Kerry Guard 32:00
Yeah, having that access to that deeper data to know exactly what's being booked, so helpful. I go to fault and sword here a little bit. I work with an estate planner, and I was getting them a ton of power of attorney stuff because I thought that they could easily upsell it. That is not true. And I found that out the hard way, and I was, and I did it. I did a about face, and was like, yep, we need to lean into the trusts and the asset protection. And it's because I could easily see how all of that broke down. So I think that's just such an important thing, like, why this financial data matters. It's more than just what your top-line revenue was. It was like, how does that break down into those services? And the services that do give you that most revenue, and to your point, like to be able to see how I thought the poas were going to lead to the apts, and that is a false flag, and I got to learn that right? You had the opposite problem, where those smaller gigs led to the bigger gigs, right? It's finding those opportunities, and that is hidden, the gems in that data. I love, love.
Robyn Goldenberg 33:12
I mean, I can fall on my sword, too. We at strategy leaders, we do valuations, and as one of our service offerings, and we believe that, like, that was the probably like your power of attorney situation, right? That was the door opener, the consulting. But what we found out is that most small business owners don't know that they should get a valuation or that they even can afford one, so we already had to, like, beat that, you know, we had to already start with from education instead of, like, a need, but we spent a lot of time marketing for valuations. And what we really like, when we looked at the sales numbers, people would get valuations and then nothing else, and they wouldn't do consulting. They wouldn't do, you know, we couldn't upsell them, because we were only selling them this product. And so we had to come back around and say, like, but we wouldn't have known that if we hadn't actually dug into the data.
Kerry Guard 34:07
Yes, yes. What data are you looking at? I mean, there's so much data out there, right? You could spend your whole day just looking at data every day.
Robyn Goldenberg 34:16
Don't do that. It'll make you cry. It will make you cry.
Kerry Guard 34:21
But the point is, there's the right data to be looking at. So I love some of these, some of these examples that you're providing. It's just amazing. Let's shift gears for a second, because we could clearly talk about, you know, the marketing side of things all day long. But business owners and what you provide is so much more than that. And so my next question, Robyn, is for businesses looking to exit in five years, what is the first thing you change about their marketing process or lead capture process? Yeah.
Robyn Goldenberg 34:56
So what I would say is, if you're. Looking to exit, thinking about exiting. Side note: When you start a business, you should be thinking about your exit so that you can exit on your own terms. That's just my little pedestal to sit on, but you want to think like a buyer, so when you look at your marketing and your sales function, right? Does it operate without you? Can it operate by itself? And can I show an outside person that this, these activities lead to this that leads to revenue, right? And so you want to, you need to make your company look and be as valuable as possible. And that really is creating this growth engine, this scalable growth engine, because at the end of the day, if I'm trying to buy your business or business, and I've already owned specific, particularly business owners who already own businesses and are going to buy another business, which is usually the buyer. They don't want to fix your systems. They want to buy a business that works. And the value of your business, how much you will get out of that from selling, is infinitely higher if it functions as it should, and if it generates revenue and positive cash flow, right? And so you want to look at your marketing as strategic, not just post-and-pray. And we have a system, right, so all the way from we do our social posts and our paid ads down to when they get to the website, they can clearly book or purchase something, or there's some sort of request for information, things like that. So you're creating a clear process on how people get all the way through to the end to buy something.
Kerry Guard 37:04
For the we were just talking to founders and doing more founder-led sort of startup. You know, to get going, you just got to start posting on LinkedIn. And that falls on the founder, and it's very founder-led. How do you transition from that founder-led motion into more of that growth engine?
Robyn Goldenberg 37:19
So I talked about having, like, on the founder side, pick one place to be, and just like maximum, optimize, maximize that place, like LinkedIn, or whatever that might be. When you jump into growth marketing, growth engine marketing, like creating this system, you have to expand where you're going, but you have to do it in a smart way. So again, not every platform all the time, every day, but to really think, Okay, well, so I always tell people that even if you're caught, even if you are a B to B business, the B at the end of that is a person, right? And so ultimately, something like, if you're targeting me, right, my business isn't on social media looking at things. I am on social media or the internet or whatever, looking at things. And some of the best campaigns I've seen is people call it retargeting, a lot of business owners, maybe I've heard that word, but they don't really know what that means or how to do it, because it feels complicated. It can be if you make it complicated. But basically, I need your ads to follow me, because it's going to take me a couple times, a bunch of times, especially in this age of seeing you, to actually make a purchase. One of the best examples I can think not my client, but one of the best examples that I can think of for like a small business, there's a company called Savoia. They are a booker, like a broker, a transportation broker. And I saw that I was on their website, doing some competitive research, and then I went on Facebook, not to look for Savoia. Their ad popped up. And then I started seeing their posts. And then I was on YouTube, watching some I don't know, Bs with my kid, and the ad that popped up was Savoia, right? So, and I already I knew the brand, because obviously it was on their website, but I indicated to them unintentionally that I might be interested in their services, and they have followed me ever since, because you accept the cookies at the bottom of the page, but it's doing things like that, not in to be creepy, but to just say, be a constant reminder, but it has to show up where I go, right? So clearly, I spend a lot of time on YouTube. I have a client with a podcast, so I'm on there a lot. So like, if you're targeting me, it's probably Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, right? And so you need to start thinking about. Where are your customers spending their time? And then, how do you tailor your message to those platforms? Right? So what works on LinkedIn isn't going to work on Instagram, because I'm on Instagram to be much more casual, probably, right? Like, I love the videos of real people talking about products or services or things like that, testimonials, right? And that could be just because I'm a marketing person, but it's things like that where, like, do I need a real person? Like, do I need a real face, or do I need text? And then it's just planning it out, and you need someone that can it shouldn't be you. As the business owner, we tend to be very like blinders on, narrow focused, because this is our baby, and we have this perceived idea of this business that probably doesn't match our customers' beliefs or how they see the business. And so what you need is someone from the outside. I know it's really hard for someone from the outside to come in and say, I get that that's like, that's what you think, and that's how you feel about this business, but that's not what Johnny the business, the other business owner, feels about your business. And s,o how do we adjust our messaging so we can get him?
Kerry Guard 41:22
As business owners, we tend to talk about what we know and from our own background. So I have, I saw a post on LinkedIn the other day from a business owner who comes from a strong, super strong sales background, and so all of his posts are about sales. And I said to him, he was like, I he said he got on his on his high horse over the weekend and posted, and it didn't go anywhere. And he was surprised. And I said, I think you have the notion that all your all your audience, your buyer, is also in sales. And while that might be accidentally true, because sorry founders, but you are the first sales and marketing person when you start a business, whether you want to be or not. Not all folks come from that background, so they can't relate. And so I Yes, I think we have to. I had another prospect who was doing something very similar. He was talking a lot about media and what the media was doing. But how does that tie to your business and the problem you solve? It's great that you know what's happening in the industry, but why does that matter? Right? Yeah. And so yes to having that outside voice, yes to having somebody look at your ICP and say, I love that you're part of your ICP, and that's how you think, but you not everybody in your ICP is the same, and is how we need to broaden the scope, so, so important, so hard, such a hard lesson I'm learning.
Robyn Goldenberg 42:44
I would also say, like your ICP, that the customer who is actually, like, controlling the purse strings of the purchase could not be the person who is doing the research to bring that to that person to make the decision. So we see this a lot in corporate travel, right? The executives who are in the planes or in the private jets, in the limos, whatever that is, they didn't make that decision. Their executive assistant or the head of like, if the business has a travel department, that person made that decision, and so you need to, so yes, the executive in your car is probably driven salesy, like, I just want to get in the car and get to my meeting and get to the airport, and I'm very direct, and I don't have time for BS, right? But your executive assistant is probably, there's a, I don't know if you're familiar with this, but they're probably like, what I would call like, a sensitive maintainer, right? So they get stuff done, but they're just like, they're there to serve. They speak a different language. They're looking for different things. They're looking for reliability and safety, and like, is my boss going to be on time? Because otherwise he'll get mad, right? They're looking at these things versus the person actually utilizing the service product. And so you need to really think about that, because in marketing, you have to, unfortunately, hit both demographics.
Kerry Guard 44:10
True, true. So how do you do that? Especially if you're on more of a this is gonna be our last question, folks. I could keep going with Robyn all day because she just keeps opening up the can of worms. It's great. Sorry, no, no, I love it. I'm here for it. So last question for you, Robyn is, when you're looking at a smaller budget or even a growth you're initially getting into that growth stage, and you're like, Oh no, not only do I have to be on on all these channels now, but I also have to talk to two different audiences. How do you do that without muddying the waters, and be do you focus on one? Do you go after both? Tell me more.
Robyn Goldenberg 44:48
You kind of test it, so you go after one or the other. I think you really have to think about who. It brings the decision to the decision maker. And if it's one person who is the shopper and the decision maker, awesome, but if it is two people or three people or a department, you are probably better off softening your language and targeting the people that are shoppers, the shoppers, and then putting some sort of strong call to action at the end. And what I would say is a really good way to figure that out is to talk to your customers, because they will tell you, not all of them, they most of them. A lot of them don't want to talk to you, but if you have a relationship with some of them, it's worth having that cover. Hey, how did you find us? How did you decide that we were the right people to go with? The right customer feedback is your best bet on how to move forward with your marketing.
Kerry Guard 45:57
Another super hard lesson, but it's why I started a podcast, because I get to sit down and hang out with my audience and understand what their pain is every day. There are creative ways to do it. You don't necessarily just have to, like, pick up the phone, but yeah, I mean, if you're having a relationship, I'm sure you have a relationship with some of your early buyers. It's so critical, it's so hard. These lessons are so hard, Robyn, you're dropping to respond all over the place, but they're so important, and I'm so grateful. Where people will learn more. They want to, they want to join your cause. Where do they find you?
Robyn Goldenberg 46:32
Well, you can, I'm sure you'll put my things, or I can comment on the thing. Yeah, LinkedIn, if you send me a DM, I will answer it. I promise to email Robyn, R, O, B, y n, at strategy leaders calm. I love speaking to business owners, even if you don't work with me. I just like hearing your stories. Also. It's really like selfishly good research for me, and I like to be helpful. Otherwise, you can head to my website. Strategy leaders calm, and I'd love to chat.
Kerry Guard 47:03
Amazing, amazing Robyn. I'm so, so grateful. Thank you so much for joining us. If you like this episode, please like, subscribe and share. A huge thanks to our producer, DesignGuru. This episode was brought to you by MKG Marketing, because a great product is worthless if no one knows it exists. We drive revenue momentum through SEO and digital ads and put you in front of the right people every time you visit mkgmarketing.com to get your engine started. Thank you again, Robyn, and thank you all to our listeners.
