April 5, 2021
How to Build and Maximize Your Marketing Budget with Melissa Forziat
In Part 13 of our Masterclass Series, Building a Strategic Marketing Plan for Your Business, host Eric Dickmann talks with Melissa Forziat, Principal at Melissa Forziat Events. Melissa is a Southern California-based marketer, speaker, consultant, and author. She teaches small businesses how to market on a budget and helps them execute their marketing strategies, in addition to working with business organizations to train their trainers. She offers keynotes, presentations, workshops, and webinars, and her national and international speaking schedule has taken her as far as New Zealand! To date, she has delivered over 120 workshops and webinars to thousands of attendees. Before starting Melissa Forziat Events and Marketing, Melissa’s career involved roles with the Olympic Winter Games, Rugby World Cup, and the US Olympic Committee.
Melissa is also the author of the free eBook Small Business Marketing on a Budget: https://melissaforziatevents.com/small-business-marketing-budget-ebook/
For additional resources on this episode and from our other episodes in this Masterclass Series, visit https://fiveechelon.com/masterclass
For more information on Melissa Foriziat and Melissa Forziat Events, visit https://melissaforziatevents.com/
Episode #64
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The Virtual CMO podcast is sponsored by the strategic marketing consulting services of The Five Echelon Group.
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If you’d like to work directly with The Five Echelon Group and receive personal coaching and support to optimize your business, enhance your marketing effectiveness and grow your revenue, visit Five Echelon.com to learn more and schedule a free consultation.
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Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
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I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
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In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business.
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Melissa Hey, welcome to The Virtual CMO Podcast.
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I'm so glad that you could join us today.
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Thank you for having me, Eric.
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Pardon me while I rock out to your intro music.
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That was
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I know.
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We we, you know, a lot of these are recorded in the morning.
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We need to get the blood flowing.
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We've had our little caffeine, and so we've sort of got to get things going down.
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So, so thanks for that.
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I appreciate you being here in the morning and and recording this with us.
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You know, we're doing this Masterclass series, which is all around building out a strategic marketing plan for your business, and I'm really glad that you're here today, because now we're getting into the final steps of that.
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And we're really talking about building out a budget to be able to support your marketing activities and really, you know, take your growth to the next level.
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So just as a means of recapping for our audience, I want to quickly go through where we are kind of in, in the process.
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So we started out with really, why are we building out a strategic marketing plan at all, what's the purpose of it?
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How to identify your target customer and ideal customer profile, the importance of product market fit and competitive differentiation, really then building a brand story that resonates with your customer, and then taking that brand story and coming up with some unique marketing messages that can really dominate in the marketplace.
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Using content creators, freelancers to then some create some great content of value that'll drive inbound marketing leads, using marketing automation, customer relationship management, and analytics to be able to have a repository for all your marketing activities and measure and analyze them.
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Then we got into a little bit around social media marketing, advertising, SEO, building a PR and communications strategy using email communications, and then we sort of get down to building out a marketing budget.
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So with that as sort of a lead-in, I'd love it.
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If you could just share with the audience a little bit about your background and what you do for your clients all around this topic of budgeting and marketing.
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Absolutely.
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I'd love to.
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So I started out my career working with major international sport events.
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I feel like that was a lifetime ago.
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It was a whole different career ago, but that's where it started.
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I started with Olympic winter games, Rugby World Cup, I worked with the US Olympic committee.
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So obviously those are the biggest businesses, the biggest brands, the biggest events you can think of.They're attracting, you know, the amount of budget they have, the amount of people that are trying to attract is at a scale that no one person can really grasp, I guess, by themselves.
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But that's where it began for me, and I got, I sort of cut my teeth and figuring out what sort of processes they have in place.
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When you see marketing done on a scale of that size, it becomes very obvious how intentional it is and you learn some of those lessons very quickly.
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So eight years ago, I started my own business somewhat accidentally.
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I was in Seattle and I started my own micro-business.
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So I'm a micro-business owner and I kind of had to figure out how to take those great principles that I had learned from working with these huge organizations, but make them work for a business that looked more like mine.
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For the budget that I had, the resources that I had, the human resources that I had.
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And I found that I was working with a lot of clients that were in a similar position to me.
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So, a lot of the types of questions, you know, a lot of the types of questions people would give me would be these huge sweeping questions like, how do I market?
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Or, you know, I just need more clients, I just need more people in the seats, I just need, you know, more calls coming in, and those are, I think, really massive questions to tackle.
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And so for me, it's very much been about sort of methodically unpacking that and I love what you've said in your intro about how you've approached this series and just the fact that you're really looking at taking a deep dive into different parts of strategy, because I think as a business owner or a business marketer, it really does have to be a strategic plan and not something that's just piecemeal tactical solutions that don't connect to each other.
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So I think And, you know, anybody who's listening in on this series, something that I bring to the table and something that I'm really glad you're bringing to the table, eric is just this idea that if you think about it just a little bit in advance, you're probably gonna get a lot more out of your marketing and a lot more reach for your business.
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Yeah, I love your background as well, which is one of the reasons that I really wanted to connect with you and bring you on the show.
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Because I think we're similar in that way.
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You know, I worked for a very large Fortune 500 company.
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We did very big events that had massive budgets, you know, 500,000 to build out a trade show booth and things like that.
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And many businesses just don't have that kind of money in their marketing budget to be able to do that.
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And I'm certainly a believer that, you know, there are a lot of things that you can spend money on there, a lot of great marketing programs that you can invest.
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But I think every marketer needs to be conscious of getting the most value for the money that they're spending and certainly taking advantage of things that are low cost or even no cost.
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And so one of the things that I'm curious as you work with your clients, maybe you've seen this, cause I certainly have with mine is sometimes they view a marketing budget is a marketing plan.
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It seems to happen a lot.
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And I think that sort of happens because the business plan process often happens first, and I think the numbers seem to be really important for that.
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But I think that the numbers don't tell you what the systems are and you really need systems to make your marketing work, because you can throw all the money in the world, an ad that reaches a lot of people.
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But if you reach those people one time and you have no way to capture them, you have no way to keep them warm and you have no way to continue communicating with them until they're ready to buy something from you.
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All that money you pumped into that one ad, what good does it do?
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So I think, you know, were you tend to see a lot of conversation about the numbers, in something as early on as like a business plan.
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And I think that's where a lot of businesses kind of get trapped into thinking that is the marketing plan.
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It's just numbers, it's goals, but how you're going to get there is something that I do think you need to spend some time flushing out because there's a lot of ways to do it.
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Yeah, and you need to know the journey that you're on and ultimately the destination that you're trying to reach so that you can employ the right marketing tactics to be able to get you there.
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And when I say that I've seen a lot of businesses that just kind of have a marketing budget, it's just a series of disconnected tactics that tend to be executed whenever they feel like there's a shortage of something.
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So we don't have enough leads coming in you know, let's turn on the faucet a little bit and go spend some money and go get some leads, but it's not a consistent approach.
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As you work with your clients, and you talk to them about that, how important is consistency as you look to your marketing plan, your marketing budget, and spreading those activities out over the course of a year.
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Consistency is so important and here's, you know, It's funny to try to answer that question for an audience that could be made up of many different types of businesses.
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Because one of the things that I've really found is that, you know, okay, some businesses, the customers in your business may have more urgency, they may have a greater need to buy something in that moment.
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And it's just a matter of, are they going to buy something from you or a competitor?
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And so maybe their process is going to be a little bit quicker and they're just looking for as much information as they can get in a small amount of time.
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But for a business like mine, and I don't want to scare anybody, but I imagine you've seen this too Eric.
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I mean, when you're doing marketing, there's a much slower burn in that process.
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People often need a lot of information from you, they need to see you around for a while.
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I need to start to trust you, they need to really feel like they don't want to try to do marketing on their own anymore, and that they want to consult with you or work with you.
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And that can take a very long time.
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So I'll tell you an example from my own business, is that I've been doing a newsletter every week every Wednesday I drop a marketing tip of the week.
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It's a somewhat in depth piece of marketing advice.
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It package it up, I put it in a newsletter, I send it out the door.
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And I have people who call me up and say, Melissa, I've been reading your newsletters for two years and I'm ready to work with you now and their grant clients.
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But think about that.
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Two years, weekly emails at least, you know, if that, if they haven't heard for me anywhere else, that's a lot of my outreach towards them, and I think I've learned what the worst-case scenario could look like for my own business.
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And that if you can build towards that for any kind of business, You know, if you're an excellent landscaper and an excellent landscape marketer, you're going to be great.
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But if you're in an industry, that's got a lot more online traffic and a lot more competition in the places that you're trying to market, consistency is the only thing that's going to help you to cut through it and consistency over time.
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So hopefully everybody who's listening, your story maybe is a little bit more abbreviated than mine is.
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If you do have a business that looks like mine does, and probably like Eric's does, then, you know, we can help you with that.
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And I think consistency is how you get there.
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I couldn't agree more.
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You've got to put yourself out there in a position that you're building that trust, your creating that emotional connection with your potential buyers, and that comes through consistency.
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Every email that you send out is not going to be opened and read.
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So if you just send out one or two, you're really rolling the dice that, that one or two messages that you've sent out are going to be the ones that prospect opens up.
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But having that information out there consistently make such a difference.
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And I think that's true both before and after the sale.
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I've had some guests on the show and we've gone into this in some detail, but.
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If you are somebody that sells something to a customer and maybe you don't expect them to buy from you for another five, ten years, that consistency after the sale is also a great way to keep that trust and then potentially build referrals from that person, from that customer, to other potential customers.
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So even after the sale, consistency is important.
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I love it.
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And we are completely on the same wavelength and I you know, sometimes I have people who tell me, there's no way somebody would buy my product more than once or my service more than once, or stay at my bed and breakfast more than once.
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And it's like, first of all, you don't know that for sure.
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But second of all, they might know other great people, just like them in your target market, who would buy your product or service and they become, they can become your biggest advocate.
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So, I don't know why we find these excuses, not to communicate with the people who have already bought from us because they're potentially our biggest ambassadors.
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And I think it's important to remember that, especially if you have a product or service where you think who would need this more than once you, you really shouldn't count yourself out like that.
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Like you just don't know how communicating with the people who believe in you enough to support you the one time you just don't know that they won't do it again.
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So, you know, I love that you said that.
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Well, and you talked about sending out a newsletter, which I think is a hugely important thing.
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We talked about that in a previous episode here about, you know, you want to start building a list, you want to start cultivating that list, and sending out content of value.
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So as we start to talk about how you put together your marketing budget, there are a lot of things that you can do around email communications, obviously building out that list, reaching out to people through social media.
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All of these are very low cost ways to do it.
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Yeah.
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There are tools that you can buy that make it easier, maybe streamline or automate the process.
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But if you really wanted to brute force it, you can do a lot of this stuff for almost no cost at all, right?
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Yeah.
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I, something that I say often is marketing either costs, money, or time or combination of the two.
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And I think, you know, if you're at a point in your business where you don't have much money to spend.
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But you do have the time to spend, you can do these brute force tactics.
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You can do these list building techniques, and you can work the tools that are free and you can work them hard.
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And You can put some time into it and really make a lot of them.
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And if you do have a budget, then that frees you up in other areas.
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So I think, you know, a lot of the time when I'm working with clients many of the types of clients I work with are really small businesses and they might start with no budget.
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But as they start getting traction and they start getting more sales and more clients or customers, and they have more fulfillment to do, then time may start to become at a premium and they might have a little bit more money to spend.
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So I think.
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A good marketing strategy is something that you look at maybe even on a yearly basis.
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Sometimes more frequent than that.
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If you're in the beginning, stages and things are really changing quickly in your business.
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But I think, you know, looking at a marketing strategy at least yearly will not only allow you to decide, you know, can I still afford time or money wise to do the same tactics I was doing before?
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But also we can't forget that we have to be tracking where the target market is going, because if you continue to be somewhere that your target market is now leaving and you're seeing evidence of that.
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Oh, maybe find some other place to go that you can get a little bit more attraction and get back in front of them.
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Like.
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I think audiences, Mario.
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Migrate pretty slowly.
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And they gave us a lot of evidence they're doing it.
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So I think being able to look at that, you know, on a somewhat regular basis, let's us kind of take control of our budget, take control of our time and make sure we're still being relevant to the audience that we're trying to reach.
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And you know with the experience that both you and I have had over our careers, either dealing with these very large companies that have big budgets or dealing with very small or micro-business that maybe, have no budget whatsoever.
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The marketing tactics that they could employ by and large, they're still fairly similar.
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I think if I look at marketing budgets and how you spend money, a lot of it can fall under, you know, the buckets of tools and automation, right?
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You can either do things manually, like you said, it's your time versus an investment in something else.
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So are you purchasing tools, investing money in getting these tools up and running to automate your process, or are you doing it more manually?
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Are you doing all your work yourself?
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Are you outsourcing it to a freelancer?
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Are you outsourcing it to an agency?
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Are you having people write and create content for you?
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It's really the scale to which you're doing things and how much work you're taking on yourself, and maybe how much you're putting on tools or outside resources to be able to execute.
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What do you think?
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Do you think that's a fair assessment?
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Yeah, and I think I'd probably add to that paid advertising sources.
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And I think in many cases, the paid advertising sources have multiple ways of for example, most of the places where you could put a paid ad, you may also be able to do a feature, you know?
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So like if you're looking at earned media opportunities, if you're looking at radio or TV or print ads, or if you're looking at anywhere where it's an earned media source, where they could potentially say here's the fee to advertise here, while the other option is to get interviewed or featured or find a way to provide content for them.
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And so I think, you know, when I think about something like an Olympic games.
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Do you know if I think about the types of businesses that I worked with way early on in the career?
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You know, I'm sure they did some amount of advertising, but they really worked their opportunities to get interviews, features, partnerships to find ways to do more of a collaborative style of marketing.
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And I think ultimately that allowed them to.
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Manage their budget a little bit more carefully to still come up with options and to maybe even reach into some niche areas that they maybe wouldn't otherwise have been able to get into.
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But that ultimately they needed to get into, if they wanted to reach the kind of numbers they were going to during their events.
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So I think.
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You know, it really is.
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Like you mentioned a couple of really important prongs with the autumn.
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Nation with, you know, potentially hiring people and obviously paid advertising sources is another one that I would add to that list.
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Yeah, I think we talk a lot here about inbound marketing and the importance of organic content to be able to pull people to you.
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And you know, the difference really is when you have a good inbound marketing strategy, when you have great content, when you're doing your SEO research and keyword research, and being able to find opportunities to rank four topic areas that are going to be ideal for the audience that you want to reach.
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That's great, right?
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Because you can do a lot of homework ahead of time, build out some great content, and then it sort of sits insurance in the background, and you're not really spending additional money on that while you're pulling in that traffic.
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But on the flip side of that, when you talk about something like a Facebook ad, you are going after a very specific audience because of the targeting tools that they offer.
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You can be very granular, very finite about the people that you're trying to reach and sort of bypass that whole organic inbound method of driving traffic, and really go after people.
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But it's going to cost you money to do that.
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And so there are ways to do it either way or both at the same time, but each one has its pros and cons.
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Absolutely.
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And I think that's where it comes back to evaluating whether you have the time or money to spend, or if it's a combination of the two, because I think it really makes different options available to you.
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If you can answer that question.
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So when you look at I don't know if there is such thing as a traditional marketing budget, per se, because she, me, I would put a column for money and a column for time next to that.
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And when I say a column for time, it's like how much.
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You know, If I'm sitting down and saying, I'm going to do a weekly newsletter while I had to make a decision that I was able to do that frequency.
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And then I had to look at the book, the components of that newsletter we're going to be.
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And I had to say, well, there's going to be a blog.
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Can I do one weekly?
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You know, what are the other elements of that?
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And so I kind of.
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Have to look at not only the scope of.
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Where I'm spending money, but look at where I'm spending time and see does that add up and, you know, Is it being used as efficiently as possible because when you see it all in front of me, with the same time across all of the marketing that you want to do, You'll start to see, well, there's just not enough hours in the week for me to do all this and serve my clients.
00:19:18.090 --> 00:19:19.260
Well, something has to give there.
00:19:19.560 --> 00:19:26.461
And so, you know, I think looking at both of those things side by side is actually all part of a marketing budget, because it's about how you're spending your resources.
00:19:26.790 --> 00:19:29.221
And for that matter, I would say it's the same thing.
00:19:29.221 --> 00:19:32.550
If you're looking at delegating or if you already have delegated because.
00:19:33.451 --> 00:19:38.760
I think that all goes into the picture, the person that you delegated to, if you're spending money on that person.
00:19:38.760 --> 00:19:42.540
Well, that's a dollar budget, but you know, they have time.
00:19:42.540 --> 00:19:44.401
So what are they going to do with that time?
00:19:44.611 --> 00:19:46.500
And I think a good marketing plan.
00:19:47.040 --> 00:19:50.070
Especially if you're at a point in your business where your budget is tight.
00:19:50.580 --> 00:19:58.471
If you look at it in those ways, I think it opens up the field a little bit more for you to really look at how to maximize all of the resources that you've got to bring to the table.
00:19:59.131 --> 00:20:06.931
So as I would help companies build out their strategic plan and start going through this budgeting process, you know, you can look at things in a couple of different buckets.
00:20:07.260 --> 00:20:16.300
So I'm curious if we sort of take something like tools that you may want to have as part of your stack, if you will, to be able to execute marketing strategy.
00:20:16.750 --> 00:20:34.451
Are there certain things that you would say, you know, whether you're a micro business or whether you're a small or mid-sized business, these are some tools that you should look at, and I would just add to that, that even things like a CRM platform, marketing automation system, a social media management tool or whatever.
00:20:34.810 --> 00:20:37.161
Almost all of those have free versions, right?
00:20:37.250 --> 00:20:47.060
You can pay for a pro version or an upgraded version that gives you additional capabilities, but even if you're a business that has really no money to spend on tools, there are tools available to you.
00:20:48.320 --> 00:20:49.131
Absolutely.
00:20:49.161 --> 00:20:55.270
So I think the one tool that I want to highlight though, as much as I'm a budget marketer type of person.
00:20:55.451 --> 00:21:04.391
I would say not for every single business, but I think a website is a critical piece of the puzzle for most businesses.
00:21:04.691 --> 00:21:14.080
And I say, not every business, I mean, I'm thinking of an example of myself here of like, I don't know, You know, it seems like if you're doing home renovation work, you know, you go.
00:21:14.500 --> 00:21:20.861
Somebody who, you know, They do the painting and they're like, Oh, but I need, we need the person who does the taping first.
00:21:20.861 --> 00:21:22.121
And then you get the painter done.
00:21:22.151 --> 00:21:23.560
And though we need the person who does this.
00:21:23.560 --> 00:21:27.280
We need the guy who has the sand, or we need the person who has this, or the woman who has that.
00:21:27.671 --> 00:21:29.851
And I don't even know if I have websites.
00:21:29.881 --> 00:21:34.230
I mean, they maybe have business cards, they have each other's phone number and they just refer each other.
00:21:34.621 --> 00:21:35.611
Seems to me.
00:21:36.961 --> 00:21:39.691
And I often think, well, Is really great.
00:21:39.691 --> 00:21:41.010
However, they did that.
00:21:41.611 --> 00:21:43.891
You know, and I'm sure there are other industries that do that too.
00:21:44.070 --> 00:21:55.500
So there may be exceptions to this thing that I'm saying, but I think for a lot of businesses having some sort of a website presence is important either because you plan on doing a lot of online marketing.
00:21:55.891 --> 00:22:00.240
In different forms and you want to drive people to that website and you want that website, you convert for you.
00:22:00.990 --> 00:22:03.601
Or maybe you don't think that you're going to do a lot of online marketing.
00:22:03.631 --> 00:22:09.151
Maybe you think that you're going to get all of your clients from in-person networking, even, you know, however we're doing that.
00:22:09.151 --> 00:22:11.371
Now, there are a lot of virtual ways to do that.
00:22:11.971 --> 00:22:13.471
Maybe you think that you'll be doing.
00:22:13.750 --> 00:22:23.980
You know, down the road, some major events where you're going to be strategic about like trade shows or, you know, different types of places where you can put yourself in front of a lot of people capture leads that way.
00:22:24.010 --> 00:22:28.421
Well, Even if you're doing things that are a little bit more networking based.
00:22:30.010 --> 00:22:37.570
A lot of times, like you don't know what somebody is process is going to be to vet you before they pick up the phone to call you to make that final sale.
00:22:37.691 --> 00:22:45.611
So I think, you know, even in the case where you're doing a lot of your initial marketing, More and more of a face-to-face setting.
00:22:46.601 --> 00:22:52.540
It helps to leave a paper trail until leave some social proof behind you and to leave some.
00:22:53.381 --> 00:22:56.590
Thought leadership behind you, if that's relevant for your industry.
00:22:56.901 --> 00:22:59.990
So that people can do a little research if they want to.
00:22:59.990 --> 00:23:01.701
Cause some buyers need that.
00:23:02.240 --> 00:23:06.121
And that could be the thing that they use now.
00:23:06.151 --> 00:23:08.820
You know, you could say that there are free tools you can do with that.
00:23:08.820 --> 00:23:13.891
You know, for example, there are certainly some social media platform is out there that you can use, but you don't own them.
00:23:13.980 --> 00:23:17.941
So I always think it's really tricky when people are using like a Facebook page.
00:23:18.540 --> 00:23:25.050
As if it were a website because it's not a website and Facebook could change and has changed its terms and conditions many times.
00:23:25.500 --> 00:23:28.601
And has made life more and more difficult for small businesses.
00:23:28.601 --> 00:23:32.141
I found over the years and there's no control that we have over that.
00:23:32.201 --> 00:23:37.540
So you either give into it and you let your business go, or you come up with something that you own.
00:23:37.570 --> 00:23:38.201
So I think.
00:23:39.131 --> 00:23:41.560
Oh, the website is the first tool that comes to my mind.
00:23:41.590 --> 00:23:43.570
When I think about the question you asked.
00:23:44.201 --> 00:23:52.871
And in the context of that, I am also a big believer in finding a way to have a lead generators and sort of an opt-in on your website because.
00:23:53.681 --> 00:23:56.711
Again, regardless of how people are coming to you.
00:23:57.101 --> 00:24:00.010
When people show up on your website, they are anonymous to you.
00:24:00.040 --> 00:24:02.500
You have no idea who they are, unless they take an action.
00:24:02.500 --> 00:24:08.740
So if there's something that you can offer, that's really enticing and short term and has distinctive value that you can Mark it.
00:24:09.401 --> 00:24:13.000
And they can get it for free if they just put in their contact information.
00:24:13.480 --> 00:24:15.010
Now, you know how to reach them.
00:24:15.131 --> 00:24:30.971
And I think whether you have an in-person model, whether you're trying to do a lot with online sales, Getting somebody's contact information and being able to have more touch points with them after their initial interest is part of most people's sales process, somewhere along the way.
00:24:31.480 --> 00:24:34.451
So I think those two things to me become relevant.
00:24:34.871 --> 00:24:48.701
And, you know, in terms of other tools, I'm sure there are a lot out there, but I do think it depends on the type of business model that you have, you know, are you going to need a CRM, maybe, are you going to need something that's going to be doing automated emailing, maybe?
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