The Business Millennials Podcast

2.3 What is the ROI You Should Expect From Marketing

• Ashley Dreager • Season 2 • Episode 3

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In this episode, Ashley and Safa dive deep into the complex relationship between marketing and sales, exploring the misconceptions around social media marketing ROI and the importance of setting realistic expectations. They discuss the distinct roles of marketing and sales departments, emphasizing that while marketing drives visibility and brand awareness, sales focuses on conversion. The conversation touches on the challenges of measuring marketing success, the value of long-term audience growth, and the need for a comprehensive strategy that aligns marketing efforts with sales goals.

Key Takeaways:

  • Marketing and sales are distinct but interconnected functions in business growth
  • Social media should not be viewed as a direct sales channel, but rather as a tool for brand awareness and visibility
  • ROI in marketing isn't always immediate or directly tied to sales figures
  • A solid strategy and consistent tracking of metrics are crucial for marketing success
  • Long-term audience growth and engagement are valuable marketing outcomes, even if they don't translate to immediate sales

Timestamps:
0:58 - Discussion on expectations for social media marketing and sales
3:30 - Explanation of the relationship between marketing and sales
6:02 - Differentiating between marketing and sales KPIs
8:40 - Example of marketing working but sales funnel issues
11:38 - Importance of understanding the customer journey in marketing strategy
17:43 - How to determine if marketing efforts are working
22:08 - The value of audience growth and long-term vision in marketing
28:19 - Cautionary note on "get rich quick" marketing promises

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Intro:

Welcome to the business millennials podcast. This show brings you strategic insights through raw and unfiltered real world advice to accelerate your business growth for longterm success. I'm Safa Harris, and I'm Ashley Drager. We're the founders of scale and thrive co a full service marketing and business development firm, helping visionary companies scale sustainably. Expect us to have the uncomfortable conversations that no one else is having. We'll break down what it really takes to grow and scale your business beyond six This is a podcast where we talk about marketing, product development, sales, and more. Via fly on the wall as we conduct strategy sessions with business owners experiencing issues such as plateaued income, burnout, and generally dropping the ball, giving you the tools and resources to break through your own roadblocks, but also personal development methods to grow you as a balanced, conscious leader amidst business growth. Let's jump into this week's episode.

Ashley Dreager:

So I saw a post recently on Facebook. She was, this is a marketing specific Facebook group. So we have a lot of marketing conversations, delivering marketing work kind of type of Facebook group. But anyways, she was talking about how her, her client or her boss was expecting a certain amount of sales to come from social media and in marketing, we, we do not see social media as. a specific sales channel. Sales can come from social media. Yes. It is used to support your sales goals. Yes. But to say X amount of sales has to come from social media in X amount of time is a big red flag because there's a lot that you cannot control with social media. Just the algorithm alone. Is not something that you can control, right? But it's something social media should be part of almost every marketing strategy, right? So there's a lot of nuances to this and we'll probably be able to get into more of those details in the specifics. But anyways, the purpose of this was that they, they're asking like, how do I achieve this sales goal as a social media manager? And the consensus for the most part was that's like new expectations need to get set. Because this is not a specific sales channel. It's not an owned channel that they can control those sales numbers from. And somebody had commented, saying, well, if you're not going to make sales on social media, then what's the point? And I was like, yeah, I mean, I think that that's how a lot of clients would respond. You know, they they're because social media management is not a cheap service. There's a lot of time that goes into social media management. There's a lot of expertise that goes into social media management. Just keeping up with the trends alone. I have heard from a number of clients that that is alone is overwhelming. I mean, that could be a full time job keeping up with what's working. What's not. What is the algorithm doing? What is responding?

Safa Harris:

Yeah,

Ashley Dreager:

times that by every single social media platform, right? Like that's a lot of data. That's a lot to keep track of. So marketing and the ROI for marketing is a hot topic.

Safa Harris:

so, here's, it's like a double edged sword. You have to do marketing so you have visibility. If you have visibility, you could potentially get sales.

Ashley Dreager:

Mm

Safa Harris:

So like, marketing and sales are like two different things. things, aspects, departments, right? But they have to work together. Like the marketing is setting the expectations. It's getting you visible. It's getting your name out there. It's getting people kind of like percolating about you. And it might be, that might be enough for those buyers

Ashley Dreager:

hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Get

Safa Harris:

the, oh, I, when I post, I get sales. Right? Like, 2020, that was happening. The sales are just happening in that percolation of social media because making the sale frankly was easier. It was. You just had an easier thing going on, but in reality, and you see that now, especially in like, it's exasperated, exasperated in.

Ashley Dreager:

it out.

Safa Harris:

The words, in this market because it's like, okay, yeah, we can have this visibility. We can get the expectations. We can get all of this out there, then sales still needs to come in and grab those people and convert them

Ashley Dreager:

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm

Safa Harris:

Those people that are there, they're, they are sometimes primed and ready, but they need to be sent somewhere. So either sales is going in and grabbing them somewhere or marketing is funneling them into like an email list or something. That's more of a sales channel into the sales department that then converts them into a sale. So what's going to, so that's why sales KPIs and marketing KPIs are different.

Ashley Dreager:

hmm. Mm

Safa Harris:

is working, you're not necessarily getting sales from your marketing working. You're

Ashley Dreager:

hmm.

Safa Harris:

more visibility. You're getting growth. You're getting conversation. You're getting all of this activity around you so people know who you are.

Ashley Dreager:

The brand awareness.

Safa Harris:

exactly for marketing.

Ashley Dreager:

Mm hmm.

Safa Harris:

saying you're not getting an ROI from marketing because you're not getting sales. is incorrect because you're looking at the wrong KPI.

Ashley Dreager:

I, I think I have a perfect example for this.

Safa Harris:

Ooh,

Ashley Dreager:

you get a chance to watch that TikTok that I sent you this morning?

Safa Harris:

Part of

Ashley Dreager:

Christopher Chaplin. I think this is,

Safa Harris:

I got the gist of it.

Ashley Dreager:

this is, this is a really great example of how marketing can be doing their job, but sales has an issue. Not necessarily that sales is like doing something wrong, but just that there's a break in the overall funnel. So this video, uh, is from a creator that we have been following for a really long time. He has a product based business, that they have started him and his wife has started up on. uh, recently, I should say. Um, and he did a little test because initially he went and talked about this new, this product that they were selling, sold an amazing amount of units, like instantly, tried to recreate that, and then didn't get really anything. From the platform. And he thought that was really odd because the, the content performed basically the same. So the content is still reaching people. It's still getting the same amount of engagement. It's still doing all of the things that you would expect from marketing, but the sales were not there. And he did a little bit of research and it seems like this platform on Tiktok specifically may not be sending people. To websites, or it may not be making those websites accessible. If it's a specific type of website. This theory is personal brand versus a e commerce or a personal website versus an e commerce website. Um, that, so that is a great example of how marketing could be working, but the, there's a break in the funnel that people are unable to convert for whatever reason, whether it's specifically your own business is doing something that's inefficient, or there's a platform issue, which is also why we can't really bank on social media being your sales platform. You, you don't have control about whether or not TikTok is going to allow that link to be clickable. I mean, in theory, it shouldn't have any issues, but business doesn't reach success on theory because there has to be the implementation.

Safa Harris:

So like the marketing KPI, you're getting that return on the marketing because it's hitting its KPI, but there is a sales issue to, in that conversion. So I think when you are putting money into marketing and, well, let me start here. I think there's like a baseline of marketing, like every business has to have. Like, the, the, the, people, you can't just build it. they will come. This is not Field of Dreams. This is, like, you have to build it and tell them about it. Right? And I think that's different between if you have a digital business versus, like, brick and mortar. Like, the marketing is your signage out front. Right? It is, like, oh, people went here and then so we saw this new place, let's go check it out, type of thing. We don't really have that privilege. in the online space, right? And even in brick and mortar, it's like, oh, we want to drive more foot traffic. Okay, well, let's ramp up marketing so we can get visibility and more people going. there and doing all that and there has to be a baseline of that that people get and then once you're at And then like i'll ask you questions in a minute of like how to know what that baseline is for you But once you have that baseline, you need to be focusing on your sales to get those converted Okay, have the visibility people know where I am. How am I pulling? And you can really go into doing, um, the benefits of that marketing and either sending them out down into some funnel or like use bringing them into a sales conversation for conversion. And that is when like sales kicks in.

Ashley Dreager:

Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh.

Safa Harris:

what that process is, then you can really go into doing the marketing. More, more marketing, more omnichannel presidents bringing in and putting in more money into marketing, which we've said this before. It's a spend department. So if you're going to ramp up your marketing, you need to have that sales part figured out. I have how you're going to pull the leads and where you're sending the lead to convert them into sales. And then, but say you don't have that sales part figured out and you're like, Oh, well, I'm just going to do more marketing and spend more money to get more sales. And you don't have that second part figured out the sales part. You're not going to make any more money and you're just spending more money. And going to, that's good. That's bad. So marketing is not the solution in this scenario. There's obviously other times when marketing is not the solution either, but sometimes it is. So one. I don't know if that's like jogged something in you to like respond on, but I also want to know what you think that baseline of just getting visibility out there for then for you to work on your sales funnel.

Ashley Dreager:

Yeah, it's, I mean, I just initially think about the customer journey and the awareness journey, because everybody's going to have a different starting point for their interest in your product or your business. And this is going to be a little bit different depending on if it's, you know, e commerce versus service based versus B2C versus B2B. So there's, I mean, there's a lot of nuances and variables to this, but generally speaking, an awareness journey Taking somebody who is an ideal client or an ideal customer, part of your target market from completely unaware that you exist or that they should be doing business with you in whatever way, all the way to conversion, it's going to apply across the board and just what it looks like specifically is where those nuances and those variables are going to come in. But. That's why it's so important to have a strategy for your marketing because then you can cover every single one of those steps without being too heavy on one leaving out a group of people that may be ready to buy today. Right. And so like

Safa Harris:

Mm

Ashley Dreager:

One of those, one of the variables is going to be, you know, do you have a 5 product or do you have a 1, 500 product, right? Like the journey and your marketing is going to look very different depending on the price point. Is this an impulse purchase? Is this something that people are going to need to take a loan out for? Like there's, it depends, right? So, but overall, you know, having that strategy and having that funnel in place, knowing where You're going to be reaching people with your marketing, how you're going to tell them about who you are and what you do, what you have to offer, and then knowing where you're sending them. I think knowing where you're sending them is like, is it going to be a huge key to successful ROIs? Because I see it all the time. It's specifically in the service based business, even in product based businesses, people are putting their marketing out there and I have to go searching for a way to make the purchase with them or, you know, they, they they're not linking their website to their socials or they're not attaching their social media to their comment. And the more clicks that somebody has to make to get to a conversion point, the more likely they're going to drop off. And then you're just going to lose them all together. So, I mean, sales and marketing have to work simultaneously. They have to, you have to know how they fit together, but they are going to work independently at the same time,

Safa Harris:

and I think we've talked about this before, it's like if you have three or more clicks, like, I'm not, I'm not buying from you.

Ashley Dreager:

And we do a lot of, we'll do a lot of like digging, like we'll, we'll take the extra steps versus compared to the average consumer. So,

Safa Harris:

click more than other people will click.

Ashley Dreager:

yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Safa Harris:

your baseline for marketing while you perfect your kind of sales aspect is going to depend. So you need the strategy, you need the root cause, you need to know even when you're like a nascent business. Like when you're brand new and you don't have a lot of money, you need to see which one is going to be the low effort, high impact on your marketing. And that's going to depend on all of these different factors. That's going to give you access to people knowing about you and then being interested in some kind of sales conversation. then you still have to plug in and figure out, okay, well, those people that are in. The sales conversation. How do I get access to them? How do I know? How do I pull them? Where am I sending them? How am I getting these sales conversations? And it might be something like, oh, well, I'm sending them into an email list. I'm sending them into a link. I am doing DM conversations. I'm doing all those. Those are sales actions. Right, so what that's going to look like for you, even at like a baseline level, might be a little bit different and your funnel is going to be a little bit different based on what you need. But those two things are working together, but they are, marketing is giving access to people to you. to create interest and then sales is taking them into conversion and things like that. So if is getting you in front of people, giving people access to you, then it's time for sales to come in and them through the funnel, get them through whatever, whatever the conversion aspect is, whatever you're doing that works. And then once you figure that out, it's like, oh, when I do these actions, I get a sale because I'm able to pull people out of this visibility I got from marketing. Then it's time to pour more money into this marketing bucket, ramp that up, get more visibility, and then also ramp up your sales activities to pull more people out to increase sales.

Ashley Dreager:

Yeah. So you need to be tracking your metrics. Your metrics are going to be, yeah.

Safa Harris:

don't pour more money into marketing until you can figure out what the conversion issues are, what the sales issues are. Get that going and then go into an omnichannel process and give more effort in there and putting all of that money in there to ramp up even more. And then if you're going to be ramping up, make sure your operations has the capacity to handle that and you're not going to lose and get bad, um, reviews or anything like that, because you can't deliver because that's also bad. So

Ashley Dreager:

Yes.

Safa Harris:

together, but they are like distinct actions.

Ashley Dreager:

Yeah. So another question that we often see in Facebook or with clients is, it feels really scary when there isn't a really solid way to see results. So how do I know it's working? How do I know that this is the right decision? And like we've been, we've been talking about it's having that strategy because you have to know what your plan is and not just throwing everything out there to see what sticks, right? When you're choosing your marketing channels. You have to know why you are choosing that marketing channel. Like, what is the intent behind putting the time and the effort and the money into Pinterest, into Instagram, into TikTok? What is the intended outcome that that channel is going to bring? Right? So there's never a a definitive way to know if something is going to work or how it is going to work. All we can do when we're developing a strategy is having an intention behind the action, having that educated guess. I suppose you could say, right? Like based on how this is performing for other people, based on how this works with my industry, with my niche, this is likely going to happen when we do X, Y, and Z, right? So that's where the strategy comes in and then implementing it. We need to track the results. What is working? What isn't working? Is this moving the needle? Is this even getting us the outcome that we expected or intended to get from the beginning? So if you've been listening to the last couple of episodes that we've been putting out. So this is where the 90 day check ins and those quarterly assessments can come in for your upcoming quarter, right? Because content creation is time consuming. It's draining for a lot of people. It's not something that the majority of people particularly. Enjoy doing, I mean, unless you're an influencer or specifically a content creator and you just love being on TikTok and creating videos. I mean, that could be a very different story, but for the majority of business owners, that's not their interest. That's not what lights them up. It's whatever they're creating, they're producing, they're building, they're serving that is giving them that joy. The content creation just happens to be a part of owning a business. So,

Safa Harris:

And on the matter of the why, it shouldn't be, oh, well, I'm going to hire a social media manager. I'm going to hire a Pinterest manager. I'm going to invest in all of this. Because I know it can make sales. It's like, yeah, technically maybe, but if you are saying, hey, I'm going to invest in Pinterest because I want to drive traffic to my podcast, to my freebie, to my blog, and get them into my sales funnel, Then yes, being like oh, I want more traffic to my blog because I'm putting out these high quality blogs And I'm not getting the website traffic I want so I'm gonna bring in Pinterest because I know my blogs will then lead people to my email list well then which I can launch XYZ to or it's gonna drive people to my Website and they will see XYZ and then submit whatever goal your why should be like I want to increase website traffic because then that will lead to my sales funnel And then if that's not converting then you're like, okay Well, why is my i'm getting website traffic from pinterest? So pinterest doing what it's supposed to be doing you're getting that return on investment from pinterest because you're getting the website traffic so then now why is the website not converting? Then you're looking at that, and then you're investing in the website. Be like, okay, well, what can I do in my copy, in my whatever, in my functionality? What is that breaking there? And then you go, so on and so forth that way. So yeah, the return on investment may not be cash, but something like Pinterest or something, even like social media, yeah. Oh, it's driving traffic to my website, my website traffic. That means it's being successful. So the

Ashley Dreager:

And,

Safa Harris:

is more than just sales.

Ashley Dreager:

and, uh, I think something that can be overlooked really easily for an ROI is audience growth and traffic. Because the, the businesses and the brands that are able to put something out and instantly get sales, they have a large audience, they have a large engaged audience, so it's more than just the funnel and all of the pieces fitting together, it's that they've spent the time to grow their brand, so they may have been in this for five, 10 years. Putting in that time, putting, you know, continuously growing. So just to put into perspective of having that long term vision and having the ROI be more than just cash today has a lot of value. I mean, just thinking about the tech and the backend setup, if you have all of this working and you have the tracking on your website, you have the Facebook pixel installed on your website, for example. You can be gathering all of that data while you're marketing, while you're doing all of this so that when you have more cash flow or when you're ready to put in ads, for example, you have an audience already built that you can retarget. So there's, there it's more than just money today. And if you're just thinking about the money today, you're going to get tripped up and it's going to be really hard to maintain the business. It's going to be hard to have a sustainable growth. Because you're missing all of these other pieces that are super valuable that marketing can be bringing you.

Safa Harris:

So like, what you were saying here, especially with like using the retargeting of the ads, that's. It's what we were saying earlier, it's like, Oh, your marketing is pulling all these people that are giving acts that it's giving access to them to like you giving you access to them. It's giving them access to you. And then, so you've put this tech in place, this pixel where, which is going in and taking all these people that have access to you and literally grabbing them and putting them into a sales retargeting campaign.

Ashley Dreager:

Mm hmm.

Safa Harris:

in there. So it's literally taking leads that marketing has generated and taking them and putting them into a sales function.

Ashley Dreager:

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm

Safa Harris:

be a marketing action to drive traffic, to generate those leads, do all of those things. And there's other times like in the scenario where it's a sales function, where you're grabbing those leads and putting them into a sales function. situation. So it's, it's complicated just because there's different parts, but I think the thing to remember is generating the visibility, grabbing them, taking them, and putting them into sales. So the ROIs are two different things. And just because you're not making sales doesn't mean it's not working. And um, I think it's something important from what, the point that you said, like, oh, that audience growth takes time and it's very valuable and marketing did that. Marketing did the audience growth. It gave people access to you, right? It, nurturing them happened from your marketing. Getting them to engage happened from your marketing and that's working. And, um, You are not possibly gonna see the sales from that today.

Ashley Dreager:

hmm.

Safa Harris:

in five years, the people that have engaged with you long term, whatever, Yeah, you're gonna put a post out there and then your marketing is gonna convert into sales. And that's possibly happen. But again, that's still a sales function because marketing already did what it was supposed to do and was successful. The ROI, as far as money, came much later when you were able to pull them into a sales function. So that's a thing to remember is sometimes The marketing ROI takes time to get there. going to be a lot of effort and it's not going to be direct, but it is going to pay off eventually in time. that takes time, effort, and money over time. So just give it, give it time. It will come. Just focus on a different aspect of what that ROI is.

Ashley Dreager:

So to pull in our iceberg analogy from

Safa Harris:

Mm

Ashley Dreager:

the previous episode, everything under the surface of the water was all of the building. So

Safa Harris:

Mm

Ashley Dreager:

our topic of unethical marketing that we see so often when people say, Oh, she just just get into digital marketing, get into digital products. You can make money this easy. They're leaving out all of the time, all of the building that they spent to be able to say, Hey guys, this is a really great product. Here's why this is what it's going to do for you. And they instantly get sales because they have the audience because they have the reach. They have the visibility. Reach visibility and audience doesn't take, it takes more than two weeks, more than three months to have something at that scale.

Safa Harris:

Yeah, because they've been doing all of that marketing and putting that time effort resources in for however long And then they went in with sales and grabbed those leads and converted them And then if they're saying oh, I launched thing this and then two days I made XYZ amount of money That might be true But you with two followers are not going to be able to do that But they had however many followers that they have been nurturing and sharing about all of these things for years. And they were able to do all of that marketing before, before they plugged in sales.

Ashley Dreager:

They're not telling you about their email list of a hundred thousand people. So

Safa Harris:

yeah, you too can get sales in two days if you already did that five years of work.

Ashley Dreager:

yeah, there's, yeah. So it could be you too. It's not, not to say, well, there's, it's, this is hopeless, but

Safa Harris:

Yeah.

Ashley Dreager:

please read, Think critically when people put out their marketing about how easy it is to make money, about how simple something could be, how lucrative a marketing channel could be. Think about all the other factors and variables that go into why that is successful, how that was successful, because it's more than just, like you said, build it and they will come. It's more than put out the post and You're going to go viral and you're going to suddenly have a hundred thousand people that are ready to drop 500 with you in an ideal world.

Safa Harris:

but.

Ashley Dreager:

Wouldn't that be great

Safa Harris:

I

Ashley Dreager:

to be the norm? Mm hmm. Mm

Safa Harris:

wouldn't, like, do all that. So, if you're hiring for marketing, if you're putting money into marketing, just remember the ROI is not necessarily sales. It could be, but sales is ROI, is sales. Marketing, it's all these other aspects and you need to remember what the why is that is going to work with your sales channels and your sales

Ashley Dreager:

hmm.

Safa Harris:

to those conversions. Thanks.

Ashley Dreager:

So if you want us to do an audit on your marketing and what you have going out there. We do offer free audits. So we'll link that in the show notes. So last for some pretty detailed information, I'll check out your website, your socials, whatever you have linked. And then we will send you back some, uh, an email with customized. Action plan with a customized action plan and projects to be focusing on. areas to optimize things that you could improve gaps that we are seeing and help you to get back on track for the growth and the scalability and increasing the ROI that you are seeing with all of your time, effort, and money.

Outro:

And that wraps up another episode of the business millennials podcast. We hope you found this conversation, thought provoking, inspirational, and helps you make a larger impact with your business. Growth is not just about profits or revenue. It's a journey of personal development, contribution, and bettering ourselves in society. Our challenge for you take at least one key lesson from our time together today that you can apply not just to your business. But your relationships, creative expression, wellbeing, and personal evolution to, we appreciate you tuning in. If you enjoyed this show, we invite you to pay it forward, share it with an entrepreneur, creative student, or community leader who needs an infusion of insight or inspiration right now. And make sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. So you never miss a single episode. And if you like what you heard, leave us a five star review. See you next week.