Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / Do Less Marketing and Sell More with Cindy Zuelsdorf

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Do Less Marketing and Sell More with Cindy Zuelsdorf · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

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We can't have everyone as our ideal customer.
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So one of the top things we need to do is figure out who we're serving.
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Hi.
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This is Melinda Emerson, the small biz lady host of the small Bizchett podcast.
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I want to serve you.
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This pandemic has been so hard on America's small businesses and on just America in
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general.
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If you're ready to start your dream business, boy, do I have a great offer for you?
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I am giving away 1000 copies of my best selling book, become your own boss in 12 months.
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Over a hundred thousand people have this book has been printed in multiple languages around
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the world, and I wanted to find a way to serve America's small businesses in this pandemic.
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And so I am giving away a 1000 copies of my book.
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All you have to do to get your copy is head over to beginmybiz.com/ free offer to, you
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know, sign up for your copy.
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All you have to do is pay shipping, and we will mail one out to you.
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I am so excited about this.
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I wanna serve you grab your copy today.
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I left off.
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Ending small business failure.
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Welcome to the Small Biz Chat podcast with a number 1 small business expert, Melinda
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Emerson.
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Melinda's goal is to end small business failure and she'll give be the information you need to
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succeed and live the life you dream of.
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Now here's the small biz lady herself.
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Melinda Emerson.
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Hi, everybody.
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I'm Melinda Emerson, the small biz lady.
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America's number one small business expert And I'm so excited to welcome you to another
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episode of the small business chat podcast.
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Today, we're gonna be talking about how to do less marketing and get better results.
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And I have an amazing guest here today.
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Her name is Cindy Zolzdorf, and she is a former overworked marketing czar turned marketing and
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automation expert.
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And she's the founder of the agency the Caccaro marketing agency, and she's the author of a
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brand new book called 7 marketing basics.
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And you can get more information about her atcacarlinc.com.
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Cindy, you're welcome.
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Welcome to the small business chat podcast.
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Thank you, Melinda.
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I'm so happy to be here.
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Oh gosh.
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You know, I'm I know we had so many scheduling snafus.
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I am so glad that we finally got it together so we could, you know, help my small business
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audience You know, it's interesting.
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People ask me all the time, like, who's your audience?
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Who are your people?
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Well, I actually have 2 groups of people.
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So I have my folks that are side hustlers.
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Maybe they're still working their full time job, and they're trying to develop that plan to
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get free to start their own business.
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And then I have my folks that have been in business 3 to 5 years, and they're, like,
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trying to see how to turn things around maybe or how to finally workless.
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Because I think when we first sat on a business, we just end up doing so much work.
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I mean, and then and we think and we do that because a, we don't have the money to hire
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people at first.
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Right?
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But we also do it because we kinda think nobody can do it as good as us.
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True?
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True.
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Do the right thing for us to do.
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So and I'm sure that that is true, when it comes to marketing, for sure.
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Like, there's a whole lot of marketing stuff you could stop doing yourself.
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And so I'm really excited to have you here today, to really kinda talk about some of the
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things people could be doing.
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But the first thing I wanna do, I wanna wind the story all the way back.
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I wanna hear your origin story.
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How did you become an overworked marketing czar?
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And what made you quit that and become your own boss.
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Oh my gosh.
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Great.
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Thank you for asking.
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Okay.
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So I started out Well, I started out working in music stores.
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And so I did everything from make my own inventory system to, I don't know, just all the
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marketing there.
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So that was a great way to start.
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I was working in Chicago and then skip ahead a little bit, and I was selling equipment to TV
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stations.
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And I would do things like go to a trade show and stay up till 3 AM processing the leads and,
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you know, just working over hard and felt like I was working 26 hours a day to get it done.
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Did that for quite a long time doing sales and marketing and service in the high-tech space.
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And then I decided to take a leap and start my own company, Cocoro Marketing, and I really
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started serving my former self, if you will.
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So I was serving other overworked marketers in the high-tech space.
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And I started to build a little team and and, walk the walk.
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Like, the things I was doing for my clients start to do from a self.
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And then people are phoning up all the time asking, like, how do you do that?
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And can you give me some advice?
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And that turned into, hey.
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Now we have 2 types of clients we work with.
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The folks who have a company, maybe just a few people in their company who need some help.
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And then the do it yourself.
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I wanna do it myself.
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And so we like to help and serve both types of people.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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So so how did I mean, what do you think are the number one reasons why small businesses fail
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with marketing or why they struggle so much with marketing?
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Other than the fact that marketing is now, like, super complicated, but other than that,
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like, what are the the common things you think drive people to sort of struggle with
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marketing?
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Yeah.
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Such a great question, Melinda.
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So I was talking with someone 2 days ago, and we got together and the woman has a great
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business, super great kind of health and fitness kind of thing that she's doing.
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And yet she feels like she's on that kinda hamster wheel running running running all the
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time.
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And she's got someone helping her with marketing maybe a couple hours a week, and we
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got to talking about her situation where she's just trying to do all these things, almost like
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you're throwing spaghetti and so well and hoping something sticks and works.
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And it's just crazy as she feels chaotic.
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Right?
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And the person who's helping her a couple hours a week is, you know, she wants to head off and
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do her own work and her own art and stuff like that.
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And so we looked at, okay.
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Let's dial down the chaos and look at what areas of your business need the most attention
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and start there to start with 1 or 2 things.
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And so, like, in her case, we put in a system where if someone's interested in that health
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and fitness system, they can fill out a form and automatically get a few emails and text
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messages with, helpful info and the next step on how to sign up.
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Instead of somebody doing that manually all the time, you can put in a system reclaim your
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life, have a little time.
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So I guess my answer is people trying to do too much instead of just taking the couple things
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at work and starting and iterating from there.
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How do you feel about that?
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Does that resonate with you?
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I I completely resonates.
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I do think people try to do too much.
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I also think one of the things that I see a lot of people struggle with is they try to do every
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social media platform.
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Right?
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And I'm like, dude, Listen.
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You probably just need 1 or 2, and you need to figure out which 1 or 2 they are by doing a
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listening strategy to find out where your niche target a customer spends the most time online.
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And, oh, by the way, before we do that, how about let's figure out who your niche target
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customer Because usually, that's the biggest thing I see is people try to market their
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budget.
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They're like, ah, wait a minute.
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If you market to everybody, that's like marketing the nobody.
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Right?
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And so I feel like when you think about marketing and small business owners, and I
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always say it this way, is it every business has the same problem, limited time and limited
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resource.
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Right?
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So why not leverage your limited time by picking a specific group of people that you
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wanna talk to.
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Matter of fact, a specific group of people who can best use your solution How about that?
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Like, wouldn't that be a wild idea?
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You know what I mean?
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So it's like when you tell people that but but every small business are especially startup
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entrepreneurs are so afraid to niche.
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Like, they're so afraid.
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Correct.
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They gonna miss something.
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And I'm like, listen, you wanna be known for something.
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Like, I'm known as the small business lady.
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If you want to talk to America's small business owners, particularly women business owners, You
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got to come see the small bus lady because those are my people.
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Right?
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I know them intimately.
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They trust me.
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You might wanna come talk to me about the best way to talk to them.
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But, again, I only do B2SMB marketing.
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I don't do consumer marketing.
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I don't do niche B2B marketing.
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No.
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I only do marketing to small business owners.
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That's what I do.
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That's what I'm best at.
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And I also happen to be, you know, have a brand with small business owners that reaches about
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3,000,000 entrepreneurs a year, a week.
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I mean, not a year, a week.
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So the point is it's like might wanna come talk to me because, like, those are my people.
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Right?
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But I but I very early on said, okay.
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This is it.
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This is who I wanna be.
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This is who I wanna talk to.
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And worked really hard to become a resource to that audience.
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Like, I couldn't sell those services until I became a resource to that audience.
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And by the way, that took 2 years.
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It took and I people ask me all the time.
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Well, how did you get 300,000 followers on Twitter?
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One follower at a time.
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That's how I did it.
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And and it took me 2 years working Twitter like a job, like 9 to 5 on Twitter, interacting with
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people, sharing stuff, answering people small business and and and giving personal anecdotes
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about myself.
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Like, I told people, I said, you can't just be a little robot, like, giving out business
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information.
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You have to actually share something about yourself.
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And this was before the selfie Instagram craze, right, because we're talking circa 2008 2009.
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So I'm I'm dating myself.
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I know, but it's it was harder to share personal stuff.
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And now it's like, That's all people share is personal stuff, and you barely get any
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tangible, like, business information, but whole another conversation for another day.
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But that that said, I wanted to ask you about when you say people try to do too much, is that
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social media piece part of it?
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Because I I realized that social media has become the number one channel, right, because
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everybody's on social media, like, all day, especially since the pandemic.
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But people are still doing too much and maybe not enough of the right things?
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Agreed.
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Agreed.
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And for social media, I put together a little course called social media basics because
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everybody's like, oh, I'm trying to do everything.
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Right?
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And I'm like, okay.
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Let's get down to some basics.
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And the piece you're talking about around authenticity makes so much sense because we
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have to be ourselves and not the sort of automaton and selling, selling, selling.
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It's like be real, be of service, and then you get to work with people.
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Right.
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Like, the so like, social media is called social for a reason.
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You have to engage
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human on human.
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Like, you have to.
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I mean, my favorite thing in the world is to meet somebody in real life.
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Yes.
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I know.
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On social media.
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Right?
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Because that's how I met you.
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We've been on LinkedIn.
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But now, you know, I'm meeting you in person, and now it's like, we have a personal
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relationship because I've now met you.
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And so I now I can now say, I know Cindy.
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And this is what I know about her.
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You know what I mean?
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So it's very different.
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It's almost being able to, like, to give a testimonial now.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Versus being like, I've seen Cindy's brand online.
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I don't really know her to, versus versus being able to be like, oh, no.
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Let me tell you about my friend, Cindy.
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Who do you want you to?
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So so I think that that's that's important, and I think kids will forget that.
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I so I just want to I want to offer a free resource to everybody on the show here because
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you're asking about how do you figure out what to do and not do too much?
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I made a free resource to help people with that.
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And so you can text text me the word biz as in small biz ladies.
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So text me the word biz, and it's 1530 203-5703.
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I'll I'll shoot that to you so you can put it in the show notes, and you'll get my free
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marketing master plan And that's a great free resource to take you through how to narrow it
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down, which area of your business to work on first find that whole or opportunity and then
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choose something basic, 1 of the 7 marketing basics, to put in there and apply to it and
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start with that and then iterate.
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I'm like, I like, if I were gonna get another tattoo, it would say iterate because iterate is
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it, man.
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Will that be one of them?
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Positivity, iterate?
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I don't know.
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Some of those kinda cool things, but iterate because it's like start with one thing and then
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grow it.
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Keep with it and grow it and make it work and make it help your people, your tribe, and then
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go from there.
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So anyway, I hope you don't mind me sharing that free research.
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Oh, no.
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I'm glad I'm glad that you did.
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I'm glad that you did, and we'll definitely get it in the show notes but you've made me think
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about something.
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You made me think about Gary Keller's book, the one thing.
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And I'm like, yes.
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The make your one thing the one thing.
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And that's in marketing.
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That's like, what is the one thing you wanna be known for?
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And what is the one platform you wanna dominate?
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What is the one thing you know that is so unique and special about your business that is
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not easily duplicatable by your competition?
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What is that one thing?
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Like, I love that concept so much, so I'm so glad you reminded me of it.
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But let's talk let's talk about your new book.
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Right?
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7 marketing basics.
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Tell me, I saw that it was a Amazon number 1 for marketing.
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So tell me what is the most important, like, if you had to say, we're the top 3 things.
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I know there's 7 things, but if you wanna tell me, what are the top 3 marketing tips that
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people should take away from your book.
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What are they?
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Yeah.
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So book and, you can get it for free and just pay the shipping if you go to my 7, the number
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7, 7 marketing basics book.com, or you can pick it up on Amazon.
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Whatever's easy for you.
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I think free works.
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I'm gonna figure out how to get the free copy definitely, but
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Yeah.
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So what's the most important thing out of it?
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Okay.
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I wanna circle back to something you just said a minute ago, Melinda, which is we can't have
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everyone as our ideal customer.
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So one of the top things we need to do is figure out who we're serving and so many small
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business owners, especially starting out, are super afraid.
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They're like, even I was talking to someone, this morning who's like, Oh, I wanna be sure we
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put everything in that email because we we don't wanna omit anything.
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And I'm like, okay.
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Wait.
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Let's actually instead pick the top 1 or 2 things and then go from there.
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And so that is a hard piece.
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And so doing that marketing master plan, it just takes, like, 7 minutes.
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You go through that, and a piece of that is just identifying your top customer, which is
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people think it's hard, but it's not Just think about the last five or ten people you did
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business with or that you want to do business with that we're good.
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Not the weird ones, not the outliers.
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But the people who you love, and that's your ideal customer.
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And maybe there's 2 or 3 like that.
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Absolutely.
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That is such a huge piece of it.
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And So that's number 1.
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Let's figure out that one customer that you wanna target.
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Okay.
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What are the other 2?
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Okay.
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One of them, another one is to have a system in place.
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And so we can't all live by, you know, sticky notes and just jotting things down on our phone
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and whiteboard knit and writing on our hand, and I'll remember to call back guy, that does
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not work in the long run.
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It's not scalable at all, and and we'll we'll lose leads because we're human.
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Right?
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And we'll forget.
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I forget to follow-up with someone if I don't put it into my system.
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So I'm a huge, huge fan of marketing automation, and it can be real simple stuff.
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It doesn't need to be super expensive or anything like that, but at least some kind of
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system where we're keeping track of of leads and we can follow-up with them.
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And so that would be a huge one.
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And then if I'm gonna give you a third one, make sure that there's an easy way for someone
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to raise their hand and indicate that they're interested with you, whether that means what I
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just did.
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Hey.
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SMS me this keyword.
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Of course, you'll be in my database, and I'll send you some info and we can start a
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conversation if we want to, but it's now a really great way for you to raise your hand and
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say you're interested.
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And you can have that on your Instagram profile and your email signature.
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If you're at an event, you're speaking on stage, have a pop up on your website, just have
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places for people to come to you and say they're interested in working with you.
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Those kinda informs.
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Does that make sense to you?
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What do you think?
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It totally makes sense to me.
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And it's like, you know, I always tell people all the time.
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Do not be anonymous.
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Like, make sure people know how to contact you, especially on your website, because your
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website is your number one sales tool.
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Like, I'm I think I'm gonna keep screaming that, like, till the cows come up, like, look,
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your website's really important.
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You gotta make sure you're welcome, Matt's out, and you gotta make sure They know who owns the
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website.
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Right?
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You know, make sure your contact you got a contact form.
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Okay.
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Put an email address on that contact form and make it's an email address somebody actually
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checks.
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Like, don't just put people in a black hole, have them email you because that nobody likes
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it.
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Nobody feel wants to feel like they gotta track you down to give you their money.
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Nobody was That's right.
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Make it easy for them to raise a hand and say they're interested.
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Make it easy for them to take the knock step toward purchasing, make it easy for them to
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buy, like, make those things super easy.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Definitely.
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Definitely.
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Now Tell me, you told me that there's an interesting meaning for the name of your
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business, Kacaro Marketing, and I wanted you to tell me and the audience about that.
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I'm so glad you asked about that.
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It's just so near and dear to me.
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So when I started my company, I was thinking, well, what's a good name?
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And I'm thinking about local landmarks and different things.
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And finally, I was like, I love the word, because it means heart, mind, and spirit.
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And then a little piece of me is like, well, that's kinda corny, but I'm like, no.
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No.
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No.
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I really like that because, it talks about heart, mind, and spirit because feel like when
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we're doing sales and marketing, we have to understand the people that we're selling to
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that we're working with.
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And further, now that I have a team of 5 people, I want to understand those people and
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work with them.
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So I care about them and what they care about.
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And in marketing, all of our messaging has to be what the customer or client cares about.
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Not about us.
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It's that whole what's in it for me.
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And I don't mean me.
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I mean, the people that we're talking with.
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And so that's what heart minded spirit is all about.
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Yeah.
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Well, I love that.
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I love that.
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And I even think the name is, like, cool.
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It's it's it's it's easy to say.
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So I love love that.
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Alright.
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So tell me about like, a hard lesson that you learned in marketing that totally could have
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been avoided.
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I think I got 10 of them.
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I could tell you, but I'm not ignoring you, so you have to tell me why.
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I know.
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I'm like, oh gosh.
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What should I choose?
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Okay.
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So one of them is I am really, really loyal, which can be a great thing.
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It can also go bad.
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So I stayed in my last work situation before I start my company, probably a little bit too
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long.
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Like, things were going a little sideways there, and it just wasn't a fit anymore.
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And I knew that in my heart, mind, and spirit, but took me a while to make a shift because it
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was scary.
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And I get so loyal.
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Like, I'm fiercely loyal.
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And so I guess that's more of a life lesson or business lesson than specific to marketing, but
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then taking it into my company now, when we had people join our team.
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We've such an awesome team.
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I had a couple people join at different times where it just wasn't a fit, and there are
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awesome people and it just wasn't a fit.
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And I learned faster to say, I wish you well and let's part ways and good luck to you and
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how can I help you?
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So I guess that piece of it.
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And that also transitions into a final piece is working with customers and clients.
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Usually, everybody's awesome to work with.
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And once in a while, I'll find a a company where we start off and things are good.
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I wanna say I can only think of two times when this happened.
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But as we're progressing, it's not a fit with our culture, how they wanna work, and what
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we're doing.
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And so at that point, same thing, I need to wish you well and say goodbye and even give a
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refund if need be just to make everybody feel comfortable and make it alright.
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So, yeah, transparency there.
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Well, I'm definitely I'm big on firing customers.
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Like, because I'm like, look, I do not deal with people that don't value me or my team.
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Like, let me hear this one of my customers, you know, manhandled somebody on my team.
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I super super don't play that.
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But it's important to you know, I've been in business for 22 years.
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So I know what it is to hire somebody that you know you need to fire and you can't because you
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personally really like them or you know their personal circumstance and how bad they need
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this job.
21:31
And, you know, I mean, and and I think all small business owners at one point or another,
21:35
women business owners, especially, we fall into the trap of they've got 2 kids.
21:39
I can't quit hire them.
21:41
You know, it's like, no.
21:42
You've gotta make sure that you are hiring people that are the best fit for your job.
21:47
And just like you can outgrow personal relationships, you can certainly outgrow work
21:52
relationships.
21:52
So I completely know what you mean by, you know, getting better at getting rid of deadwood
21:58
faster, or moving people in a position where they'll be happier, and you'll be happier with
22:03
them.
22:04
Now talk to me about your biggest day to day struggle because I feel like when it comes to
22:09
marketing, marketing is, like, the thing that people do last, whereas marketing is the
22:16
closest thing you have to getting more money in your business.
22:19
So I don't understand why we don't prioritize that and, like, schedule it maybe, but talk to
22:24
me about your personal day to day struggles and how you fit time in to do marketing for
22:30
yourself.
22:30
Right?
22:31
You teach marketing, help people marketing all day, but then How do you market your business,
22:35
Cindy?
22:36
Yeah.
22:37
Great question, Melinda.
22:38
And I would say that my business Success really increased when I started walking that walk and
22:45
doing the things that we do for our clients for my company for Caccaro.
22:50
And, in my case, I just started little by little, doing things myself and then a signing
22:56
it to members of the team so they could help me.
22:58
So it's a team effort and everybody's involved.
23:01
So that's a piece of it.
23:02
And day to day struggles, and let me say that probably the biggest struggle, is that I'll
23:08
have ideas in my head about how to do something, and I need to communicate it to my
23:12
coworkers so that it can get done or so we can collab on it.
23:16
And I have one right now.
23:18
This this minute.
23:19
So probably after this session, I need to I talked to the client yesterday, and we set up a
23:23
kind of strategy thing on how they're gonna promote, 3 of their upcoming trade shows.
23:28
And I have an idea how to do that, but I have not communicated that to anyone on my team.
23:33
And so I need to I'm I'm like, oh, can I get that into Asana, our project management, in an
23:38
easy way, or do I have to think about it?
23:40
And I'm my own worst enemy on that.
23:42
So I have to get it out of my head and share it.
23:45
Yeah.
23:45
You end up being your own bottleneck in your business.
23:48
Ask me how I know about that.
23:49
So So tell me something.
23:53
I know you've gotta have a great story about how your 7 marketing basics tip worked with one
23:58
of your clients, and I'd love to hear it.
24:00
Oh, yeah.
24:01
So many good ones.
24:03
Oh my gosh.
24:03
How to pick?
24:04
Okay.
24:04
So one of them is, we were working with, somebody who's giving technical papers and they
24:10
get on a stage and, they would either do virtual or in person events.
24:15
And they'd go to these events and they'd come back and I'd go, how was the event?
24:18
Great.
24:19
How many people were there?
24:20
Oh, a couple 100 or 20 or whatever the number was.
24:23
Nice.
24:24
Can we can we follow-up with them?
24:25
Oh, I don't have their names because I was speaking from stage, and I don't know who is
24:28
there.
24:29
Okay.
24:30
So, we did a shift around that where we said, okay.
24:34
Let's set up that SMS kinda like I just did earlier, you know, text me that keyword and we
24:39
set that up so that they could go and and give a presentation and say, and if you want the
24:43
slides or and if you want this extra bonus info text this keyword.
24:47
And that kind of changed.
24:48
It pivoted for them a lot of things to where when they went to the show, they could easily
24:54
start a conversation and interact with people right there.
24:57
And now they're capturing leads instead of just showing up and talking.
25:01
So that's one.
25:02
Can I share one more?
25:04
Yes.
25:04
But we're getting tight on time.
25:06
So quickly.
25:06
Yes.
25:07
Quickly.
25:08
Okay.
25:09
So we were working with a company that has some software.
25:12
And I asked them, what do people do right before they buy?
25:16
And, of course, they download a trial.
25:18
So we started driving all the marketing too.
25:21
Please download a trial and then set up a nice automated follow-up so that if the salespeople
25:26
didn't have time to call, they were still getting automated follow-up to help those
25:30
people make the most of their trial.
25:33
Love it.
25:34
I love it.
25:34
And and sales funnels are really, really important.
25:37
Everybody's gotta figure that Alright.
25:39
So last two questions for you.
25:41
What is if you lost everything today, what would you do to generate money in the next 30
25:47
days?
25:47
What would you do?
25:48
Yeah.
25:49
So I kind of have already lived that because when I left the job that I had, I didn't have a
25:56
plan.
25:57
Things went sideways and I left.
25:58
And I was like, oh my gosh.
26:00
What am what am I gonna do?
26:02
Cried a whole bunch that's how I started, whether I should or shouldn't have, but just
26:06
all all the cards on table.
26:07
So I I reached out to everybody.
26:09
I knew I didn't say, hey.
26:10
Do you have a job?
26:11
I just reached out?
26:12
I'm hey.
26:12
What's going on?
26:13
And a lot of people called me and talked with me.
26:16
And I just listened and I was literally asking every day, like, what should I do?
26:20
What should I do?
26:21
Like, just trying to be present, get out of my own way.
26:24
And then I, for me, I had an aja around marketing automation and that I could serve my
26:29
former self.
26:30
So then I would say, put something together.
26:33
Like, now I've put my 7 marketing basics course together.
26:36
I couldn't do that at the time because I just didn't know enough, but if you can put
26:39
something together, you can offer and then just go forward from there.
26:43
So count on your network and then, like, one step at a time.
26:47
Awesome.
26:47
Awesome.
26:48
Alright, Cindy.
26:49
Well, how can people get in touch with you if they wanna follow-up?
26:53
Yeah.
26:53
So I would say Go to my website, cocoroinc.comkokor0incincinc.com and check us
27:02
out there But maybe just grab my book.
27:05
You can get it for free.
27:06
As I mentioned, you just pick up the shipping, and that's 7, the number 7 marketing basics
27:12
book.com, and you can always find me on linkedin and Instagram at Cindy Zuelsdorf.
27:18
And I know my name's kinda crazy to spell, but We'll let you put that in the show notes if
27:22
that's okay.
27:23
That would be great.
27:24
That would be great.
27:25
Thank you so much, Cindy, for joining me.
27:27
She is the president's founder and a CEO of the Caccaro marketing agency, and you have been
27:34
listening to the small biz chat podcast I'm Melinda Emerson, and I just wanna leave you
27:39
with this.
27:39
You never lose in business either you win or you learn.
27:44
Take care, everybody.
27:48
Thank you for listening to the Small Biz Chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
27:53
For more resources and small business success strategies, visit succeed as your own boss.com.
27:59
Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and join us next Wednesday.