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What Founders Need to Know about Branding and Marketing to Effectively Build Their Teams with Victoria Hajjar, Ugli Ventures: Show Notes & Transcript

Post | Aug 06, 2024

Welcome back to Marketing Smarts! From brand-building and marketing veterans Anne Candido and April Martini (that’s us) comes a podcast committed to cutting through all the confusing marketing BS so you can actually understand how to take action and change your business today. We deep-dive into topics most would gloss-over, infusing real-world examples from our combined 35+ years of corporate and agency experience. We tell it how it is so whether you are just starting out or have been in business awhile, you have the Marketing Smarts to immediately impact your business.

In this episode, we’re talking building your team with Victoria Hajjar. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re exercising your Marketing Smarts!

  • Episode Summary & Player
  • Show Notes
  • Marketing Smarts Summary
  • Transcript

Marketing Smarts: What Founders Need to Know about Branding and Marketing to Effectively Build Their Teams with Victoria Hajjar, Ugli Ventures

Building a team is a crucial step as your business matures. And your team can be a huge help in strengthening your branding and marketing efforts. But, there are plenty of decisions to make, such as full-time employees or freelancers, maximizing your team’s capabilities, and deciding who’s a good fit for your company. We wanted you to learn from an expert who knows both team-building and marketing super well, so we welcomed on Victoria Hajjar, Founder of Ugli Ventures. They help transform your business from ugly to beautiful and give you the tools to grow. This episode covers everything from branding to team-building. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

  • What do many founders miss about branding and marketing in the startup phase?
  • How does the marketing flywheel work?
  • When should you add people to your team?
  • How are sales and marketing tied together?
  • Should you work with freelancers or hire full-time employees?
  • How do you find great people to work with?
  • What does an audit of your team look like?
  • Who’s Victoria’s biggest business mentor?

And as always, if you need help in building your Marketing Smarts, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

  • What Founders Need to Know about Branding and Marketing to Effectively Build Their Teams with Victoria Hajjar, Ugli Ventures
    • [0:00] Welcome to Marketing Smarts
    • [0:22] Anne Candido, April Martini
    • [1:40] Connect with Victoria on LinkedIn, at UgliVentures.com, and get her free guide at UgliVentures.com/Strategy
    • [1:55] What is her background?
    • [3:48] What do many founders miss about branding and marketing in the startup phase?
    • [11:52] How does the marketing flywheel work?
    • [15:41] Google Ads
    • [19:25] How are sales and marketing tied together?
    • [24:38] How do you find great people to work with?
    • [28:05] We’d like to invite you to join ForthRight Women: The Cohort. This community is for females who are ambitious in their careers, but want an equally fulfilling personal life. For more information and to join the group, check out ForthRight-Women.com
    • [29:52] When should you add people to your team?
    • [33:24] ManyChat
    • [36:35] How do you audit your team?
    • [42:15] Should you work with freelancers or hire full-time employees?
    • Quick-Fire Questions

What is Marketing Smarts?

From brand-building and marketing veterans Anne Candido and April Martini comes a podcast committed to cutting through all the confusing marketing BS so you can actually understand how to take action and change your business today. They deep-dive into topics most would gloss-over, infusing real-world examples from their combined 35+ years of corporate and agency experience. They tell it how it is so whether you are just starting out or have been in business awhile, you have the Marketing Smarts to immediately impact your business.

How do I exercise my Marketing Smarts?

Thanks for listening to Marketing Smarts. Get in touch here to become a savvier marketer. 

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Anne Candido 0:00
This is Marketing Smarts, a podcast committed to helping you become a savvier marketing leader No matter your level. And each episode will dive into a relevant topic or challenge that marketing leaders are currently facing. We’ll also give you practical tools and applications that will help you put what you learn into practice today. Now let’s get to it. Welcome to Marketing Smarts. I am Anne Candido and I am April martini, and today we’re going to talk about what founders need to know about marketing to effectively build their teams. So when you’re starting a business, you generally aren’t thinking about branding and marketing right away, except for the very basics, like your name and your logo and maybe a website and maybe some paid social and that is totally fine in the short term, but all successful businesses must mature, and maturing means developing a brand. Why is this important? Because brands create tangible value. We talk about this all the time, because tangible value means you can command a higher price, you can drive more loyalty, you know, continue to attract more users, and you have more impact.

April Martini 1:02
That’s exactly right, and it also creates a foundation for more efficient and productive marketing executions. But this can feel like a black box to many, one of the many reasons we’ve started this podcast, in fact, and quite frankly, a distraction from the actual efforts of selling, which is the pushback we often get from people about branding and marketing, but in actuality, it can fuel your sales, as we already discussed. So how do you ensure you’re properly focused on and putting effort behind the right branding and marketing that will power your business? Well, you build the right team, and that is what we are going to talk about in today’s episode. And to help us with this, we

Anne Candido 1:42
are going to have a fantastic guest. Her name is Victoria Hajjar, and she is from Ugli Ventures. So Victoria, you want to say hi and introduce yourself?

Victoria Hajjar 1:52
Oh, hi, yes. Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here. Yes. My name is Victoria Hajjar, the founder at Ugli Ventures, because business can be ugly sometimes, especially when it comes to sales and marketing. So that’s sort of the the premise for my whole business. So I’ve been working directly with founders and key stakeholders and investors to help grow and scale businesses, specifically businesses looking to grow from six to seven figures, and in that range, it is often a transitional moment where we are kind of getting away from just kind of getting that support that you need, that is a little bit random, just kind of getting things off your plate. And we transitioned into this stage where we’re building teams a little bit more strategically, right? And so that’s why I’m really excited to talk about this topic. Because, you know, when we’re first starting out in our businesses again, we kind of accumulate like a hodgepodge of people that are helping to do this, that and the other, and we’re trying a lot of things to see what’s working and what’s really catching on, but I would love to share some strategic frameworks that I use in order to identify, you know, what team members we need to grow our Lean marketing team, and then how to sort of find and vet the best people. Because I have a system that I’ve been using for many, many years that seems to be working out pretty well for me, and I’d love to share that process with everyone. Awesome. Well,

Anne Candido 3:23
that’s gonna be a fantastic conversation, because we get those conversation or have those conversations and get those questions all the time. So I’m sure everybody is now tuning in very, very avidly. Okay, yeah, so let’s get started with what founders need to know about branding and marketing to effectively build their team. So Victoria, let’s set the stage a bit. So you’re a fractional cmo from many startups, so you can correct this if there’s a different title or positioning you want to put around that. But you know, at the beginning, a lot of the effort is about proof of concept. So what do you think many founders miss in terms of branding and marketing at this stage?

Victoria Hajjar 3:59
So you know, when we’re at that stage, like I said, where we’re kind of like throwing things against the wall to see what sticks, which is really what we do at the beginning, honestly, we’re trying to see where we can gain traction. So what, what kind of social media content, you know, deciding on what platform, really understanding the and building out the funnels and the landing page, and sort of when we get through this phase where we’ve found some things that seem to be producing and seem to be working to bring in some repeated sales, that is exactly the moment where we really should begin to standardize some important things about the brand, and then looking at our Market marketing growth strategy and also putting some strategic actions in place in order to build that team around like a focused effort. So the first thing that I always love to do working with clients, and yes, I’ve worked as a fractional chief marketing officer, I also run an accelerator program for female founders to sort of help get them that. Strategic Marketing guidance and support without having to bring on a full CMO or fractional marketing director. Because, again, in that six figure realm, a lot of times the the folks that hire me as a as a fractional marketing director, whatever are, have already arrived to to seven figures. And that six figure space is so painful sometimes. And so when a founder, like a founder led business, has really discovered, yes, this is who I serve, right? This is really where I’m gaining that traction. This is really where a lot of my customers, a lot of my my clients, this is what they look like. This is their pain points. You know, we have to go through that phase of serving our customers and clients and really understanding them better than they understand themselves. And that process is one that I don’t think there’s many shortcuts to. I think it’s so so important for like founders themselves, business owners, to understand that, to really get them their hands dirty understanding that, but once they have the answers to that, to those questions of who they serve and what are you know, what’s the transformation? What are the key pain points? The first phase that I think is really important to go through is nailing down that brand communication, and so before we can start building on a team and building the marketing growth strategy, which is the second step we really need to get how to use language in a way that’s going to convert prospects into paying customers and clients in a way that is scalable, right? So some core message themes, and this is where we’re putting together, where I’m sure you guys have talked about before, right as like a messaging matrix, and again, when we’re testing things out, or maybe we’re trying a lot of different angles, but when we’re ready to kind of grow and scale, we’ve sort of understood which of that communication strategy really hits, Right? And that’s really important, because understanding that communication and really, truly understanding the customers, and brings us to our next decision of where we’re really zoning in. Because sometimes when we first start businesses, we can go a little bit wide with the segments, but as we’re looking to grow and scale, I really love to focus down on the one segment that we’re really going to double down on especially when we’re limited budget and limited hands in the business, right? So that foundational framework must happen. I believe before we can kind of build that scalable growth strategy where we would need to build out that team. So after kind of the brand communication strategy is laid out. I always look at building for customers and with founders, what I call the 24 by seven marketing flywheel, which is just a version of the client journey, right? And I’m sure you guys have chatted about the client journey, but what we want to look at, in terms of the client journey, is really building out a full and thriving marketing flywheel and identifying, you know what we’re doing, so kind of audit what’s happening at the stage that you’re in, right? What activities are you doing? And then looking through this, this journey, this 24 by seven marketing flywheel, understanding, okay, what we have in place, what we don’t have in place, what kind of tactics we want to go after that, maybe we aren’t, aren’t doing already, and we want to map that out so we’re doing some strategic activity at each stage of the client journey. And when we get really clear on that, then we can start looking at our resources, and this is where the team comes in, right? So I always start by looking at the client journey and then answering the question of, you know, based on what needs to happen to build out this full and thriving marketing flywheel, as I call it, who do we have on the team that can execute certain activities, but then you really have to get honest with yourself and say, Is this the right person to execute this thing? And that’s where a lot of teams get stuck in these small teams where they have, you know, so and so has been working with you from the beginning, and so we tend to kind of just like, let our team, like, YouTube it and learn themselves and figure it out. And the problem becomes, is, like, they may not have the skills and knowledge to do what we need to get done, and we end up, like, maybe wasting a lot of money and time, right? And so that’s like, that’s sort of my basic roadmap for how I build the team is really looking at the 24 by seven marketing flywheel, seeing what’s working, what’s not working, what additional activities need to happen in order to build out this full and thriving marketing flywheel, and then really seeing who do I have on the team that has the knowledge? Knowledge to execute what needs to get done and where do I need to fill in the gaps? And that might not mean you have to switch out your team. It might simply mean you have to find someone for to execute a particular project or to set something up. But we have to get, like, really honest with ourselves at some point in our business and say we can’t just stretch and kind of push people in to do everything, because that can keep us stuck for a long time, because we’re afraid of making an investment for people that maybe have experience doing a certain thing right, and we try to cut corners and stuff, but often, maybe that keeps us stuck.

April Martini 10:37
Yeah. I mean, I think you bring up a ton of good points in that and philosophically aligned with a lot of the things that Anne and I talk about, and get questions about that all the time. And I think the testing and learning piece is really important in the beginning, like you said, Because you are trying to figure out what works. And it’s not the time to be paralyzed by it has to be perfect before we go and do X, Y, and Z. But then the other part that I think is spot on, as you kind of start to get to that maturity where you used to have to funnel down and make some choices and decisions, and so love what you said about, you know, who you’re serving in the customer journey and all of that. The piece I would love for you to talk a little more about is the more internal side of that, whether it’s through the lens of brand or just, you know, culture, or whatever that looks like, because I’m assuming next we’re going to go into the actual team building, and that part is a part where we also focus a lot of our time and attention, and just not the skill sets of the people, but who those people are. And then also, sometimes there are times to make changes or ad or the culture needs to shift, and those kinds of things. So I would just love some perspective there.

Victoria Hajjar 11:44
You know, after doing an audit, and really like that deep dive of what is your 24/7 marketing flywheel, right? And there’s six stages of the 24/7 marketing flywheel, and whichever version you’re going with, right? A client journey. There’s a lot of different ways to describe it, but how I, you know, conceptualize it at six stages. We look at each one of these stages, and we plan, right? We audit, and then we plan what’s working, what’s not working. And then once you’ve done that sort of, that high level strategic work, the next piece of that is really sharing that with your team, right? So everyone gets on the same page with what we’re working on and how all of these pieces of the puzzle are going to fit together. And I want to just kind of mark this for one minute, because this is a really, really important part of the team, like support and the team building in general, which is bringing everyone together. Too many founders that I work with and mentor, you know, really work with different and I’m sure you guys have experienced this, the different people that are executing on the marketing the founder becomes sort of like the communication point, and so all of the people executing the marketing are really doing it in a silo, and people aren’t talking to each other. And this is really a product of, I believe many of us building our teams from like freelancers and contractors and all this stuff. And because they’re not like employees, maybe we don’t want to bring them all together for goal planning. We don’t want to bring them all together for a weekly meeting. I feel like people. We tend to feel like bad, like we don’t want to take up people’s time or make them feel, you know, like they’re too committed or whatever, if they’re working on multiple projects. And I think that’s like a huge mistake, because everything that you’re doing in marketing, of course, has to be working in concert with each other in order to get the results right. And so we need to be aware of what everyone else is working on, but also be able to come to have free discussion about how one thing affects another. So, like, a really good example is, you know, many people maybe, will have, like, an ads manager that’s just like working independently, and they kind of check in with them once a month and give a report or whatever, and that ads manager isn’t connected or know anything about the rest of the funnel, like the landing pages and the website and all of that stuff, right? And so by keeping these conversations separate and kind of managing people separately, you’re missing out on a lot of creative juice that can be shared amongst team members, but also can be sort of at a disadvantage for the results, right? And, you know, not understanding how things play together. So the first stage is really getting all of the people working in your business together and sort of sharing, what is that strategy, what is the overarching plan for the business when it comes to sales and marketing, so everyone can understand what is needing. To be achieved, and then through that right, through that discussion, we can assess, you know, do I have the right people? Right if we discuss with our team the results and understand who has worked on certain things in the past or gotten results in the past? Because if we want to start really again, if we’re building a lean team, we want to understand what our team has experience in doing so good. Another good example here is like, you know, I’ve worked in teams with ads managers, going back to the ads managers who maybe for for a business they’re just managing, you know, Google ads, right? And that person could be working in the business for a long time, but then we could not even know that they have experience with managing other ads, right? Or they have, you know, they’ve their experience. CRO like things come up that you wouldn’t know, so you definitely want to assess the experience of of your team and what they can do, right? And then, of course, once you’ve done that assessment, and if you don’t have people to fill in the needs that are needed, that’s when we want to start filling in the gaps. And depending on the budget, and depending who we find, it may be that we have to shuffle people around, because we have, you know, if we’re trying to find an ads manager, for example, that’s going to do meta, but that person could also cover Google. Maybe makes more sense to have one person handling those two things than two separate managers for two different platforms. So in that sense, you want to look at how you can consolidate what needs to get done and who you have to execute. And that’s how we keep our teams very lean, right? Yeah. So really, so we want to understand the resources, right? What resources do we have within our team that we may not be aware of? And then we want to actively go and find folks to fill in the gaps where we really do have a need. I

Anne Candido 16:54
want to unpack several of those points, because I think it’s so important. Several of the things that you, you said for people to hear, especially on the founder side, and especially more in the startup phase of that one, you’re only, I say only into six figures. But six figures is still tremendous success. But if you’re thinking about seven figures, you’re thinking about scale and growth, right? It’s the next step, but you’re right. It is a painful kind of middle part where you’re not quite, yeah, the baby anymore, but you’re not quite the adult yet, and you’re kind of trying to figure out this adolescence time, but this is also the optimum time to make sure that everything is short up. So I love what you said about the importance of brand and really understanding what your brand foundation is at that point in time. Because I think a lot of founders kind of get stuck in their mind of like, well, when I figure out what success looks like, or when I kind of figured out what my proof of concept is, or when I figured out like I’ve made so much money, then I can invest in marketing, right? And so they get caught in this catch 22 where they never feel like it’s the quote, unquote right time, until the time when they’re looking for growth, scale, investment, all those sorts of things there, and the people come back, either by virtue of the client telling you or an investor telling you, like you don’t have anything. That’s a value here, right? Yeah, but you’re selling a product or you’re selling a service, but there’s no other value around that. So starting from day one and really building out with intention saves a lot of time. It is more of an investment of energy. It is more of an investment in a little bit of money. But being able to kind of develop it as early as possible gives you that foundation then to build that efficiency that you need for your marketing. Like what you were saying is like, if you’re going to silo it out, you don’t get the power of the brand that drives a continuity across the marketing channels. And if you only have a limited investment, your investment is not going to get that far. You need the power of the brand to fuel which makes everything more productive, makes everything more efficient, and in that way, you can create an engine for your business. Because the other thing that I hear a lot of them say is like, Oh, we’re focused on sales right now. We’re not focused on marketing. We’re focused on sales. I’m like, it’s an and guys, it’s not an or I’m like, sales and marketing, or should be intrinsically linked together. And when you do it right, they help each other create momentum. And we going back to the communications, like the reason for actually being and the purpose, and what’s going to compel people to want to choose you. So all these pieces working together are extremely, extremely important, because it provides the basis and the foundation for creating that value, that tangible value that’s so important. Do you agree or more? Do you have to say?

Victoria Hajjar 19:33
And what’s so interesting is that I’ve seen it many times where and I’ve seen, I mean, I’ve worked with founders that have really sincerely muscled their way to, you know, two, $3 million in revenue without having, like, a cohesive team, really like, again, that, that idea of bringing the whole team, anyone that works in your business, together once a week, to. Look at the scorecard and to really like review what’s going on, and to kind of bring the power of all the creativity and everyone’s experience together to have fruitful discussions about what’s going on. It’s possible to get very far with having all these siloed conversations, but you, either as the business owner or you as the marketing lead, you need to be the anchor for everything that’s going on. And one of the ways that you can do that again is by consolidating that communication and making sure that there are fruitful discussions, not just like getting by for getting tasks done, right? Like what’s happening in Slack, no, like how we are actually harnessing, as I said, the experience and creativity of everyone on the team to really help get things to the next level, right? And I think that, you know, often there’s, again, like hidden resources we don’t know that is, that is even lying within our team. But on the other end of the spectrum, when you do find that you’re missing some pieces of the puzzle. No, I think we tend to get into this idea of, like, I don’t want to invest or we’re kind of nervous to bring new people on. But again, like tapping into someone’s knowledge for again, different ways you can tap in, either bringing people on for a project basis, spending money to get someone to audit something that’s going on if your current team can’t figure it out. Like, okay, our conversion rates are low on our email program. Like, I’m the first person to say, Listen. Find someone that’s at the top of their field, or someone that you know is doing really well. You don’t have to hire them, pay them for an hour or two hours of their time to have a conversation with you, or do an audit. This is a way that you can smartly leverage the resources you have without feeling you have to bring on that cost on a recurring basis, on a retainer basis. But I think we need to get you know really curious, and if things go beyond sort of our knowledge grade, then there’s so many ways that we can get that knowledge and get those eyes on what’s going on in our business, and get that strategic advice without having to hire, you know, really expensive people or higher mega agencies to do everything for us. We can get bits and pieces done that that need to be done in a better way, and again, leveraging those, those project based tasks as well that can really uplevel things like a conversion copywriter right to come in to kind of clean up some copy, or someone, you know, to do a website audit or to do an ADS audit, we can learn so much. And again, these things are like, you know, a flash in the pan, the cost, versus getting, like, the fancy, very expensive person to do it. You know,

April Martini 22:46
I love that philosophy on things, because even for us being on the agency, so it’s our philosophy, right from the agency standpoint, where there is one school of thought that you have to bring everybody on, and it has to be traditional and formal, and they’re not going to be committed if they’re not employed by you, and all of these things that we have heard over the years, but similar to you, we’ve found the opposite, which is part of why it’s just us that forthright people, right and then we tap into those experts. But even beyond that, I think the approach of not only use them for the thing they’re good at, but use them very specifically for what we need right now in this moment. And it doesn’t have to be every single thing I do often see that as a tremendous barrier. And actually, you know, not, I mean, I’m, it’s going to sound like I’m self promoting, which I guess I in restaurants.

I am cast. I am but I’m bringing this up because I think it is so true that it’s something that’s just so easily missed, which I think is why it’s so important to talk about it. Because we’ll be brought in, and someone will say, I think I need a website, but someone quoted me $35,000 for that. And I’m like, Well, yeah, if you needed a $35,000 website, but right now, to use your reference like, we just need a landing page, and that’s x, right? And so it’s really using what I think is so great about people that even take the approach of being a founder and taking your expertise and input to help them expand that natural skill set into how do you then creatively find the right people to surround yourself with, and then also to keep those people on your bench for later, which is also our model, right? It’s like we only bring people in as they’re needed, and then they go back out, but they come back, either for that client or other clients over time. And so the beauty of that is that you’re building the bench of people and expertise you have access to and not wasting their time at the time that they don’t have to be fully involved.

Victoria Hajjar 24:46
Mm, hmm. And to that point, I think, you know, we’re to talk a little bit about like, how do you find great people? I actually love using this like knowledge share, either through audits or for small. All projects as a little bit of the part of the vetting process for bringing people on more like, I love that. I think, you know, there’s a one philosophy I learned from working with one of the most successful founders I work with, and his philosophy was, you know, I don’t work with you till I’ve worked with you. That was like, Yeah, and I really incorporated that into any of the teams that I’ve built. I mean, I’ve been, again, as a fractional CMO, fractional marketing director, however you want to call it, you know, I I’ve been tasked, you know, I’m usually working with a handful of clients at a time and building different individual teams. So I’ve had to develop a process where I’m going to feel very confident bringing someone on and right, because it’s very time consuming. It can be very costly to have that turnover. And so I find that when you go in and you’re doing because again, this all comes back to the audit. Right when we’re looking at marketing and sales on a quarterly basis, we really want to be looking at our pipeline, our funnels, all of that stuff, and really know what’s working, what’s not working, and when we find things performing sub optimally, and we’re thinking of bringing someone else on, you know, inviting someone to do a small piece of what needs to get done, or again, running those audits, you’re going to learn so much by the act of doing it, not only the knowledge you’re going to gain, but all of the other subtleties of like, do they reply in a timely manner? Right? Do they follow instructions? Right? Are they, you know, what is their just general attitude? Can you kind of jive? So you could be, you know, doing this kind of test project thing, and really get to know some great people that you can bring into your business long term. So that’s one of my favorite strategies. So either, you know, and if you’re looking to just hire for a position, I also do this. So let’s say I’m in the position where it’s like, I know I need a social media manager, and I don’t, you know, not going to test anyone out. I need to do it. You know, I am always the one to say, Okay, let’s get three or four candidates, and let’s put them into a test project. I pay everyone for it, by the way, by hour, and I cap it, and I have them do something that I need anyway, and it works so much better than just like bringing someone in, paying for them for the month. Who knows? You know what I mean, or you give them a trial period, but then if they don’t work out, you’re back to the drawing board with a test project where you, when you throw, like, I link at least three people into it, three or four. What happens if someone doesn’t work out? You’ve got, like, someone else in the in the wings, like, right? And often, you can get these folks to just do something that you already need, like, produce a week’s worth of content or, or, or give me a marketing like a, like a content strategy, or do an audit for this platform, whatever, so you get their quality, you know, and you and you can know that before you bring them on in a more permanent way.

Anne Candido 28:04
I think that’s extremely smart. And I like the fact that you compensate them for doing that, because a lot of times you kind of hang a carrot out in front of people and be like, Hey, if you do a really good job on this, there might be more work for you, right? And being able to justify that in this day and age, I think is really, really tough. Those days are by the wayside, but it doesn’t stop some people from wanting to do that. But I also think too the point that you’re making, if you’re going to vet people in that way, it’s really important for founders and you had mentioned being curious, but also to understand enough about branding and marketing to ask good questions, to be able to vet appropriately, to know what work looks good, and if you don’t know what good work looks like, and what is a qualified candidate, all of those sorts of things, you need somebody like Victoria. You need somebody who has that expertise be like, Hey, listen. You may think that this social post is fantastic, but I’m going to tell you like five things that are wrong with that, but at first glance, a lot of them will think that that’s great, or they’re just, again, trying to check the box and kind of being like, well, I have social out there, so therefore I’m good, right? And let’s focus now more on the debt to tactical lead generation, things which everybody says to kind of gravitate towards. So my question here for you is, what is kind of like the cadence of what do you need to know, when and when should you start bringing people on in order to do some of this work that you’re talking about?

Victoria Hajjar 29:33
So I always work backwards, right? So we’re always working backwards from what do we need to produce, right? And I think, like, again, in bigger organizations, this is probably, like, very intuitive, and then everyone knows this, but I talk to founders all the time that don’t think in this way, because when we’re building on a marketing strategy, we first need to answer the question, like, how much revenue do we need to bring into the business, right? And what is okay? So. So how many sales is that? And given our conversion rate, how many leads? Right? We work backwards, right? So when we understand how many leads we need to bring in from the marketing department to the sales team or to or just actually to convert into sales, well then we have to ask the question of where the leads going to come from. Like, where are they going to come from? And we need to get really strategic there, right? Are they are we going to make sales through, you know, is this all coming from ads? Is this going to be coming from our, you know, our email campaigns from our existing list? You know, are we going to get here, our leads and sales through partnerships? We need to map out, like, tangibly, what are our expectations for each of these channels? And oftentimes, we don’t do this work. We just want the results. So we’re looking at the lagging metrics where it’s like, yeah, we want, like, you know, X amount of leads a month and X amount of sales a month. But when you sit there and you’re like, hey, this is what we’ve been getting, you know, here’s our sales from ads, here’s how many sales from emails. And say, like, if we need to double that, right? What needs to be true? What needs to be true? Do we need to spend more money? Do we need to create a position of someone that’s just going to focus on partnerships and do twice or three times the amount of partnerships like we need to tangibly understand where the leads and sales going to come from, and we need to forecast that, and we need to put a target on there. And sometimes, as the marketers, we need to go through the pain of just not reaching those goals and asking the question of, like, what’s wrong here? So that’s really where we start. And that could mean, hey, you know, and I love to do this, where I love to go through this exercise when I’m forecasting, where we look at those leads, and then we we assign percentages for where those leads are going to come from, or their sales are going to come from. So maybe, you know, 50% of that’s going to come from ads, you know, and then maybe 20% will come from email marketing, maybe 10% through referral program, right? So we really get that tangible number, and then we start testing like, Okay, if we don’t do anything differently, you know, what are we going to reach? And then if there’s a big deficit there, we start to test, you know, what could we be doing more? So, like, a really good example here is, you know, if we want to assign a certain percentage of leads and sales to come from social media, then we may look a little bit step further and say, Is there different kind of content we can produce? Can we be using an automation like medi chat that’s going to, you know, prompt people in the DMS to give them promotional promo codes, or kind of start a conversation with them? Then once we have that like black and white, goal versus actual, that’s not quite there, based on the the lead the KPIs, we put for each channel, that’s where the magic happens, because that’s when we get the team together and we start saying, like, well, what could we do? And what’s even better about folks that are freelancers is we get to say, Hey, what’s going on with your other clients? Or working with an agency, right with an agency, you have this great, great opportunity to say, hey, like with the other accounts you’re working on, what’s their cost per acquisition for similar or what are some of the strategies that’s working for them on their on their social media? So this is really where, like, the work comes in, because it’s not enough to just say yes, we’re going to have a social strategy, and we’re going to do this, that and the other. We want to say, like, we need this production from each one of these things, and if it’s not working, then we got to get creative, right, and see what other things we can be doing to enhance and that’s when we often run up against this idea of, does the person I have on my team have the skills to get us to the other level, the next level, right? Their social media manager, and they’re doing like, oh, like, the content is pretty nice, and we’re doing it consistently. But guess what? That’s not enough anymore. The content has to be excellent. Content needs to be way better than it ever had to be two or three years ago, right? So we need to, and then that’s when we’re going to look at, you know, maybe upgrading people where we need more production, right? Yeah, well, I

April Martini 34:32
mean, first of all, I love what you said about the leveraging your partners to learn other things. I mean, one of the things we talk about all the time is our clients know more about their business than we’re ever going to know, but we know a little bit about a lot of different clients, and so that sort of like, you know, call it themes or patterns or trends or whatever, in the way you can leverage those from different verticals or pillars or whatever and bring it into different businesses is huge. Yeah, but then the other part about what you said about when it’s time to tap different people, I would love some more insight into that piece, because this is something we talk about all the time, where we’re continually reevaluating our bench, and it seems to happen in line with when the business reaches another milestone or another size of client, or, you know, there’s all those like, pivotal moments where these things happen, and I would say we’re fairly good at taking the emotion out of it, but I think also getting in front of things a little bit, and how you start to do that, because I think you’ve given some tips about, like, Well, if you’ve got four people at one time, right, then you likely have other people. That makes it a little easier, but just those transition moments and how you can be proactive and then also decisive, I think,

Victoria Hajjar 35:48
yeah, so, I mean, this goes back to the 24/7 marketing flywheel. So when you’re doing that audit and you’re looking at that journey, it’s really important to, again, understand what’s going on in the world, in the market, right? And be honest if you’re really leveraging all the opportunity that exists in that particular channel. And if the answer is no, that’s when you start to dig a little bit deeper. And that’s where, again, having that knowledge that you said, because this is also what I carry, right? I don’t know everything as as well as my clients or the founders I work with are going to know about their business, but to be able to share, like, what other businesses are doing that maybe that person had not thought of before is so, so vital. And if you don’t have like, if someone’s listening and they’re like, Oh, but I don’t work with an agency or consultant, have that to tap into. It’s just me. That’s why it is so important to cultivate community and talk to other business owners, or, if you’re a marketer, other marketers, and just learn what’s working and what’s not working. Like, I can tell you, you know, whatever, our relationship, because we’re both marketers, like, it’s so interesting for me to just hear like best practices. I’ll give you a good example. So one founder that I’ve worked with before introduced me to this idea of of a position that isn’t they called a an MDR. So an SDR is like a sales development representative, right? So that’s someone that would be kind of setting up calls for the sales team, and it’s like an outbound sales thing, but he had this position that was an MDR, and I had never heard of that before. And an MDR was really someone that was opening up opportunities just from DMS, that was like their job to monitor conversations and monitor comments and all of that stuff and engagement, and then open up sales conversations in DMS, individually, on LinkedIn and on Instagram. And they got really good results from that strategy. So having that knowledge, when I went into a nut with working with another founder that had a similar business, I was like, Hey, we should try this. This is an example of how we can get more production out of a social channel. So when you’re sitting there and thinking like, how could I get more leads and sales from social media, I am already putting out content every day, right? This is something that, again, when you look at the pain of that chasm between your projections and what the reality is, that’s what prompts us to ask those questions. That’s why I think it’s so important to have those targets and have a scorecard there that everyone on the team is reviewing, because you just may have someone on your team that has an experience like I did, where someone else they worked with had an MDR, and could give you that idea, right? Yes. So this is, this is part of you know why we need to stay open, why we need to really honor like creativity and discussions and all of that stuff, because these things can come up, and it is possible to get more production, because sorry, to go back to your original question, if you’re like, Hey, I’m not getting the amount of leads that I need, the question could be, we’re not reaching the leads. And guess what? We can’t invest any more money in ADS. We don’t have the budget. So what do we do? That’s where you got to answer the question. And you look at your other channels, and you’re like, where do I have a little bit of traction? Maybe with partners. Maybe I’ve done well with partners. So how can we double down on partners? This is the thought line, right? That we need to be going through the problem solving in action, right? And those questions are going to lead us to new tactics, new strategies, that we can try out new software and things like that.

Anne Candido 39:44
I think that’s brilliant, and I for a couple of reasons. One is, I think it really hits another tension point for founders, which is, I need to be as lean and mean as possible. So therefore I need to be as broad as. Possible, right? And they forget about the second stage, the third stage, the fourth stage, of really cultivating and getting everything you can out of a channel. So what you said about the fact that you put out a social media post, you get DMS. We tend to let the DMS sit there, right? And it’s like, these are potential leads. But then it takes effort. It takes time. It feels very niche. It’s like, I don’t have time to go in, you know, address 100 DMS. Well, great. Then it becomes a question of, should we hire somebody to do that? And or is there another opportunity that allows us to scale beyond that? And so I love that mentality, because a lot of times again it goes to, I’m going to set it and forget it, or I’m just going to put it out there and it’s going to do its own magic, and then all of a sudden, poof, you get the leads. But sometimes it does take that effort. It takes that cultivation of those channels to really get them to perform the way that you need to perform. And sometimes it is highly, highly hands on to begin with, and you can make the strategic choice about investment of bringing people in in order to do that level of work. But if you don’t think that it’s, it’s going to pay out, then you’re probably not looking at it. I like what you’re talking about. Your 24/7 marketing, wheel marketing, fly. Yeah, you have to kind of look at it from the standpoint of what you’re trying to achieve. So I love that, the fact that you look from the from the end back. But it does beg the question, and we talked about this a little bit, but I want to hit this one on the head, which is the whole idea of outsourcing versus hiring, which always seems to be attention and for some reason, the mentality, especially for founders, especially in that middle stages, we’re going to do it all ourselves. We’re not going to invest in outside people, one for various reasons. But I’d love for you to speak to what those various reasons are, and what kind of the pros and cons of bringing people in versus hiring out.

Victoria Hajjar 41:50
This is a very personal choice, because I feel like for business owners, the first and foremost question is like, what game do you want to play? What kind of business do you want to create? Because some people have an appetite to grow in house, folks. I mean, there’s plenty of people that are running multi, seven figure businesses with extremely small teams so it and have, you know, and they have contractors and people come in. Depends how many people you want to manage and all that stuff. So I think it’s a very personal decision, but what I do feel is a smart move is is really harnessing a combination. So even if you are wanting to, you know, get those employees because you want to own the strategy, which I actually think is really great. It’s really honorable. I think sometimes a lot of business owners, especially for marketing, like, they want, just like someone else, to figure it out for them. Yep, and again, like, and I’m this, and I’m in the same exact position as you guys, I feel like they hire you, they just want you to take care of it. The problem is, is that, like, you know, oftentimes consultants or agencies, I mean, we don’t stay with businesses their entire life, right? Things change, budgets change, situations change. So I think that there is a huge advantage to having the core strategy and people in your that are employees to really understand and to own what’s going on. Now, that said, it’s very, very difficult and costly to get those employees that have that knowledge already. So what I think is, as businesses grow now, when you you know, before you’re you know, a corporation, right? A lot of stages business in the six and seven and a lot in the seven figures. I think have to rely on this combination, where you’re really hiring out people that are more experienced, because you can’t afford to have a full time employee that had that level experience. And so you want to really focus on if you’re going to have an employee, you want them to be really growth minded. You want them to be someone that jives very much with your culture, someone that’s excited to learn, and that you can give that person opportunity to learn through working with agency. And you can work with agency for several years, and the agency can actually help to share and teach and all those things. So maybe in a couple years, that marketing manager can turn into a marketing director, right, and they don’t need the agency to serve the strategy right as they grow into different stages or, you know, and this is what I try to do a lot as a marketing director. I honestly, as a fractional marketing director, I am not with clients forever, and nor do I want to be right. I want to give them the wings to fly and and oftentimes that means, you know, me working, you know, I’ve worked with clients for normally, you know, maybe 812, months, I’ve worked with some clients. I. To five years, right? But my joy is really giving the organization’s ways to fly, and you need different things at different stages, right? And that’s why it’s, I mean, I know that you probably have clients that you work with forever, but sometimes it’s not a good match on either side to work with a client forever. And so that’s why I think this knowledge transfer is also important. So I think there has to be a combination.

April Martini 45:27
Yeah, yeah, no. I think that’s great. I mean, and I would tend to agree, just based on what we talked about in the beginning, about how the business continues to change. I mean, just when you go from six to seven figures, or seven figures to whatever, or like, you still need flexibility in the system, and I think from my perspective, where some of the clients fall down is when they have full time employees, and I was alluding to this before, and they don’t want to have to let them go, but it is the right decision. Whereas, if you have flexibility in the system, but you’re looking for people with the same mentality, whether they’re permanent employees or they’re outsourced or agency or whatever, if you’re still looking for those same mindsets of you know, they take personal pride in their work. They want to keep growing. They’re curious, and that is the threat of what you’re looking for, whether they’re full time or not, the combination turns out, typically, to be really nice, because there’s flexibility in it, both from what the people that aren’t part of the organization are bringing in the people that are all the way to if you need to make a change, those outsourced folks know that most times they’re not going to be there permanently, right? And so I think it takes some of the pressure off, and it also allows for more focus in other ways so that you can be doing the right things.

Victoria Hajjar 46:42
Yeah, absolutely, 100%

Anne Candido 46:46
Yeah. I think that’s a really, really fabulous way to kind of bring this conversation all the way back to the beginning, which is all about what founders need to know in order to be able to really build those, those marketing and branding teams. But before we let you go Victoria, we have some rapid fire questions for you so people get to know you a little bit better. All right. Favorite series to bench watch?

Victoria Hajjar 47:13
Oh, this is a little bit peek into, I’m, actually, I, I’m, I’m watching this, like Mexican TV show called 100 days to fall in love, because I’m trying to to sharpen my Spanish. So I’m, like, forcing myself to watch t like to watch TV shows in Spanish, and I’ve gone to the point where I don’t even have, I don’t have the English subtitles. My husband’s from Spain, so we do speak Spanish, but it’s like, you know, sometimes you want to just like, turn it off. But I’m like, I force myself so 100 days to fall in love. I’ve been watching that just like, it’s got so many episodes. It’s kind of like a soap opera.

April Martini 47:50
Oh, nice notes. Work out.

Anne Candido 47:53
I’ve been watching Acapulco for the exact reason too. I tried to not watch it with the subtitles. Have you seen Acapulco? No, I haven’t, it’s on Hulu. I think it’s really cute. Yeah, it’s like 80s. It’s a really feel good, like, just romantic comedy about a resort set in Acapulco like, in the 80s. And it’s extremely funny. But Constans,

Victoria Hajjar 48:15
that does remind me, though, like one of the most recent things that I became, like, obsessed with was white lotus, yeah,

April Martini 48:21
yeah, that

Victoria Hajjar 48:23
just got me, yeah. That was one of those moments. Those were one of those shows and like, I know it’s not like brand new, but we whatever we’ve been watched it, but I would get literal anxiety, because I had 100%

yes, it was so stressful. Yeah, totally. But I loved it so

Anne Candido 48:39
not a light hearted romantic comedy, okay, all right, if you could retire right now, what would you do?

Victoria Hajjar 48:48
Oh, my gosh, I would just live, go live in Spain, that’s where my husband’s from, and we would just go on a boat every day and drink wine. Love that. That

sounds that

would be enough. I think, yeah,

Anne Candido 49:04
all right. Final one here, business person you must admire.

Victoria Hajjar 49:07
Oh, well, I actually had the honor to work very closely with her. But sunira Madani is a unicorn founder who built, you know, a billion dollar business here in Florida. So she’s actually been a client. We work very close together, and I’ve got to be like, see her life behind the scenes, and she’s just so so just inspiring. She’s got two little girls. She’s on the cover of Ink Magazine and all the Forbes lists, and she’s raised so much money. She’s a very cool story. So sunira Madani, she actually infamously closed a funding round while she was, like, seven months pregnant. She’s like a rock star, so I feel very blessed to like, call her a friend, but she’s a mentor and someone that is like a guiding star. For me, I look up to her very much. So. Love that. All right.

Anne Candido 50:00
Well, this has been a fabulous conversation. Victoria, I’d love for you just to kind of bring us home. Is there anything else that you would like to share, and then obviously tell everybody where they can find you. Okay?

Victoria Hajjar 50:12
Well, I think the most important point here, though, is like when we talk about building teams, we can’t forget about the conversation around the leadership. And I think so many founders and business owners, they don’t like leadership feels something very corporate. And I think that we tend to just not really think of what we’re doing when we have, like these small teams as like being a leader and leading them. And I think that the earlier we can start getting into those shoes and thinking of ourselves as a leader and consciously showing up as a leader, what happens is that actually our lives become much easier because we’re not like in it, like in the fire all the time, like wearing all the hats, Whatever, when we step into the shoes as a leader of our live in our business, we start thinking less about like, what am I executing myself? Or have to do everything myself? There’s this like, idea that you’re like toe in the line, and it’s so much effort. But when you think of yourself as a leader and you cultivate a team, and again, it doesn’t have to be employees, and this is where people also don’t think of themselves as leader, because maybe they don’t have a big employees, right? But we do need to still lead our agency partners, our consultants, our freelancers, even our dot like our niece that’s doing our social media management. If we show up as leaders, what happens is everyone around us, they step up, they take things more seriously. They you set the tone. And so that’s why, I think, like in all of this conversation, and that is also a big piece of it, right? Is stepping into the shoes of leader and really deciding and having this idea of, like, how do you want to show up, right? How do you want to show up as a leader? And when you also put that hat on as leader, you start cultivating also more like loyalty around everyone around you, because you’re not just like managing tasks, you’re managing performance and you’re managing outcomes, and then you’re developing partnerships with everyone, creative partners with everyone that you work with. So I think that’s, that’s probably the next podcast, leadership, but it’s an important, it’s an important thing to come back. I got exactly um, but anyway, but everyone can find me. So my my website, my business, is Ugli Ventures And if you go to UgliVentures.com/Strategy. I have a free guide on how to build out your 24/7 marketing flywheel, how to create a sales focus, marketing strategy and the methodology that I use. So if you want to check that out, that is great. There’s a couple other resources that you can find on a website as well. But you can also connect with me on DM, on LinkedIn, that’s where I spend, like all my time. I love being on LinkedIn. That’s my platform of choice. I

Anne Candido 53:04
love that. I love that. So thank you so much Victoria. Please everybody, check Victoria out, and with that, we’ll say, go and exercise your Marketing Smarts!

April Martini 53:12
Still need help in growing your Marketing Smarts? Contact us through our website: ForthRight-People.com we can help you become a savvier marketer through coaching or training you and your team or doing the work on your behalf. Please also help us grow the podcast by rating and reviewing on your player of choice and sharing with at least one person. Now, go show off your Marketing Smarts!